Candide

The Airlines have complained at length to the John D. Odegard School of Aerospace Sciences (read: pilot factory I attend) that the finished product (my peers) are excellent at tactical skills, but severely lack Business Communication and Business Writing skills. To that end, I am sitting in ISBE 320: Business Communication and Writing. The professor is going over Negative News Letters and how we should be spinning them so as to highlight the good of the situation, using Voltaire's Candide as a talking point - best of all possible worlds.

Of course, my Misanthropy screams bloody murder as she says this, but my sense of ethics fire off as well. She's talking about not telling a hypothetical person the real reason you won't write them a letter of recommendation to Harvard Law and we vehemently disagree that she should not be so "Candide" and perhaps be a bit more candid.

It occurs to me that perhaps a lack of education is not the reason we fail at business writing.

A sense of ethics and the midwest bluntness are clearly what do us in here, which disturbs me to no small end, that the nice guy cannot succeed in business by being nice. Or maybe I'm just mad at capitalism for overwhelming me with the massive choice of video cards on the market.

TRH