According to Author Jim Ruland, it’s important to have intentions and goals in mind of what you’re trying to communicate. That’s a good starting point to knowing what is extraneous information and can be left on the cutting room floor, and also what is important to the story.
EPISODE CREDITS
Guest Starring Jim Ruland, Author
Produced & Hosted by Adam Greenfield
Executive Produced by Patrick Yurick, Instructional Designer – MIT OGE
Executive Produced by Heather Konar, Communication Director – MIT OGE
Special thanks to the following editors who provided us invaluable feedback that aided in the development of this show:
Christopher O’Keeffe, Co-Founder of Podcation
Kristy Bennet, Manager – MIT Women’s League
Jennifer Cherone, Phd Candidate – MIT Burge Laboratory
Erik Tillman, Phd, Formerly of the Kim Lab & Currently A Fellow at Vida Ventures, LLC
The Great Communicators Podcast is a part of Gradcommx. Gradcommx, targeted at enhancing research communication, is the first offering of Gradx – a professional development project created for the graduate student population at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology by the Office For Graduate Education.
MUSIC & SOUNDS
“All The Best Fakers” by Nick Jaina is licensed under a Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 International License (http://freemusicarchive.org)

“Marquetry” by Blue Dot Sessions is licensed under a Attribution-NonCommercial License. (http://freemusicarchive.org)
“The Molerat” by Blue Dot Sessions is licensed under a Attribution-NonCommercial License. (http://freemusicarchive.org)
“Deliberate Thought” Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) is Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/
EPISODE SCRIPT

Print The Script Here

ADAM GREENFIELD

Welcome to The Great Communicators Podcast presented by The MIT Office of Graduate Education, a professional development podcast expressly designed to bring lessons from the field to our graduate student researchers.
My name is Adam Greenfield and a majority of you have probably spent countless hours already writing research papers or grant proposals or other forms of communication. So it’s probably no secret that there’s nothing easy about it.
But what if I told you there are things you can do to make your written communication process not just easier, but better in its effectiveness? No, there’s no magic involved. Neither I nor today’s guest are that good. Just solid advice and a reminder that what you’re writing is more than just a list of ideas and points, and also what you should be focusing on when you’re short on space and time.

Our guest is a writer who, like previous guests in this series, stresses audience engagement but in his own way that he’s honed over time. Oh, and his writing career started in the punk rock music scene.

JIM RULAND

And I still do that, by the way. I still write for punk zines, even though I don’t get out to as many shows as I used to.

ADAM GREENFIELD

That’s Jim Ruland, a San Diego based writer whose name and voice is well established in the literary scene.

JIM RULAND

I write a lot of different things. Professionally, I’m a copywriter, that’s my day job,