How a Marketing Professor Writes

Quick Facts

Favorite music to write to?

Southern Hip Hop

Favorite place to write?

Living room

What’s a word you always misspell?

Practitioner

 

Janée Burkhalter
Professor of Marketing


SJU Writes: Why do you write?

JB: I started because I wanted to, and then this career was a really good fit for that. Now I think it’s a combination of the two. My mom is an English teacher and a librarian, so writing was always a thing that was encouraged whether it was poems or letters or whatever I did on my own.

SJU Writes: What kinds of writing do you do ?

JB: Academic papers, social media postings, and emails. Social media is everything, but mostly Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn. I make jewelry, so the focus is more on the visuals and the hashtags than on the caption. In the spring semester, the students live tweet TV shows for their Entertainment Marketing class, and I live tweet with them. That is really fun, because then we can talk about how people watch all different kinds of shows, sometimes shows I have never seen before. Then I have to figure out what the community is like and what people mean when they say different things.

SJU Writes: What’s the best thing you’ve ever written in your life?

JB: The best things I like to go back and read are recommendation letters. I think it is interesting—not recommendation letters written for me but recommendation letters I have written for students—because it is interesting what stands out and because of what I do for the peer evaluations. That is always interesting to read and see how my style has changed.

SJU Writes: What is your ideal physical environment in which you like to write?

JB: My requirements are noise. Noise makes me happy. As long as I could put my feet up, I’m happy, so I could prop up my laptop if I want to or prop up my book. And morning or night? That is not consistent. I just have to be inspired to do it.

SJU Writes: What advice do you have for students learning to write in your discipline?

JB: Read! I think reading will let you see different styles. I think you can get different inspiration from reading different stuff. Sometimes you read something and say “That’s really cool!” It gives me something I would like to practice—let me try my hand in XYZ. So I think reading is the best. And practicing, practicing your writing.

—Jacqueline Collins ’21