A Variety of New Ventures

Thus far, each week of my internship has been full of new knowledge and experiences. At the beginning of this week, however, I was worried that the newness trend would end. Most of the things I worked on in the office this week were things I’ve done in previous weeks, but there turned out to be plenty of new and interesting experiences in store for me.

(Above: red folders filled with submissions stack up around Friends Journal)

The week began pretty regularly. I worked on my long-term projects, commented on articles for the upcoming special issue on Quaker education, and did quite a bit of proofreading for the August issue, which will be printed soon. I’m still trying to draw a clear distinction between copyediting and proofreading, which both involve carefully reading a manuscript for errors. I think that copyediting describes most of the editing I do and proofreading is more of a final check after an edited, formatted copy of the article has been ‘run out’ or printed. It amazes me that after so many edits there are still errors to be discovered right before sending an issue to the printer. It can feel pretty tedious to reread an article I’ve already edited, but I’ve actually caught errors that I didn’t notice the first time.

This week’s notably new experiences began on Wednesday at lunch when a bunch of my fellow interns and I went to Chinatown for lunch. I had never been to Chinatown before and there were lots of new sights and smells—unfortunately Chinatown on a hot summer day was not the most pleasant place for my nose to be. Regardless, we found a charming, reasonably priced Chinese restaurant and had a fun time! I always look forward to lunch breaks with the other interns. Usually we all bring lunches and eat together outside. Depending on the day there are typically at least four or five of us and it’s fun to get to know each other while enjoying the summer sun (or preferably the shade).

Following Wednesday’s lunch adventure I got to work on writing some short descriptions of the articles for the August issue’s table of contents. Someone else had drafted a set of descriptions, but my task was to rework them to add variety to the way each was worded. I learned afterward that the descriptions were meant to be as short as possible while still being full sentences, so unfortunately mine had to be shortened and simplified. But hey, at least some of my words got in there and I'll know what to do if I ever get a chance to try again! Completing new tasks like this one reminds me that there are so many steps to publishing an issue that I never really think about. It seems obvious now, but I had never considered that someone needed to write those descriptions.

The final adventure of this week was my commute home today. It started pouring about twenty minutes before I needed to leave and let up somewhat for my walk to the station. I arrived only slightly soggy, thinking I had lucked out by missing the worst of it. Well, I was pretty wrong. The weather caused a lot of delays and I waited for almost an hour to get on a very crowded train. I did not enjoy waiting on the humid platform or standing in the over-crowded train, but I was pleasantly surprised by the sense camaraderie I felt from the other passengers. People joked with each other, offered up their seats, and displayed a great deal of patience for the situation.