WAG - Enjoying a time out
Life has been on fast-forward all year.
The bad news is that it's November.
The good news is that it's November.
I'm still working on digging myself out from the hole I ended up in after Election Day. I'm almost done - and I mean it this time, despite having made that statement every day since last Thursday. This morning I read "To the Lighthouse" by Virginia Woolfe in almost one sitting (excepting the fact I started on page 23, after having fallen asleep while tackling the book sometime last night, I ran through the 209 pages - filled with paragraphs consisting of run-on sentences, with several shifts in clauses, as well as other subjects, but that doesn't bother me since I'm used to them - I'll wait as you re-read this statement a couple times to shake it all out).
Even as everything else has been speeding up, I am blessed to find life at the copy desk moving like molasses crawling out of an overturned jar in Maine during a snowstorm.
At an institution where the Missouri method is practiced, giving students as much hands-on practice as professors can give them, having a glut of journalism students can work in your favor. This is the time of the year where those enrolled in the beginning copy editing class are asked to shadow people at the copy desk before riding solo while reviewing articles.
I went through the same requirements and try to be kind to the the people who work next to me for an hour or two. Many of them are less than confident and only seem to poke through a handful of pages before their time is up - often to their elated relief. Though the individual impact may be sparse, putting over a hundred extra people through the copy desk can lessen the load of those who come in the afternoon.
For the first time in months, I haven't had anything to do. No stories to glance over, no editorials to cut, no proofs to look over, no nothing.
It's great.
It has been benefiting a lot of people. The 110er, or whatever number represents that editing class, who signed up for this afternoon hadn't done anything in nearly an hour when I arrived. After flipping through Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, pocketbook version, he started going through the "blue book" or "Official Manual of the State of Missouri 2003-2004" and looking up his professor's salaries.
"How much does your Japanese professor make?"
"About $17,000."
"I hope they have a good medical plan."
"She and her husband are leaving the university."
"I guess we know why."
When we looked up the salary of the managing editor of the Missourian. We couldn't look up the regular editors, despite our great interest, because they aren't officially recognized at employees of the state of Missouri. When we found the amount to be $70,000 for an associate professor position, it was noted that it wasn't enough. That observation was quickly followed with the belief that "it not being enough" would apply to any randomly selected salary of MU officials. We'll... maybe not all the athletic positions, but you get the idea.
Not much is going on right now, and even if it is only meant to last for a few hours, that makes me happy. Band practice is also cancelled this week and all of this might add up to just enough to catch up.
Worst case scenario, I can try the same thing again tomorrow.
'copy_desk_repieve'
