My Editing Professor

I'm having a bit of a life crisis right now. I decided when I was a sophomore in high school that I wanted to be an editor, live in New York City, and work at some big publishing company. See, I'm one of those people that you always wanted to peer edit your papers in high school English classes because I like grammar and punctuation and all that jazz. And of course, being my naive self, I thought that was the only thing to editing: throw in a comma here, take out a verb there, and voila! Instant bestseller. Well, it's not quite as simple as that, as I'm painfully finding out in my ELang 350: Basic Editing Skills class. Unfortunately for me.

As I sat in my class a few weeks ago, learning about how to correctly hyphenate words according to the Chicago Manual of Style, that absolutely awful, traffic-cone-orange book that I swear weighs a hundred pounds on the days I have to bring it to class, I realized that I didn't actually like what I was doing. It just wasn't any fun to add in those hyphens, decide between a comma and a semi-colon, or delete a conjunction. I used to enjoy it in high school when all I did was peer-edit my friends' papers and tell them they did a great job no matter how awful the papers really were, but I just don't like it anymore. Maybe because I actually have to make decisions (which I'm terrible at) and provide criticism (which makes me feel bad), all the while validating that every change I suggest is really correct, instead of relying on my instincts like I used to. This epiphany was not at all comforting; it actually made me panic, and I almost started hyperventilating in the middle of my professor's lecture on the varied lengths of dashes. Why the freak out? Well, it might have had to do with the fact that my entire life plan was flying out the window, but that could just be a hunch.

So what did I do? I panicked for the next few hours before I realized that I couldn't do anything about it now because it's too late in the semester to just drop the class. So I put a lid on my fear until finals week (which would really be an awful time to freak out again; maybe I should adjust that time frame) and decided to just keep trying. Who knows, by the end of the semester, I might have regained my love for editing. This all happened two weeks ago. And then today in class, my professor started discussing summer internships, and I freaked out all over again. I panicked so much that I decided to go discuss it with my professor. So I dutifully trekked to his office on the fourth floor of the JFSB to express my ridiculous concerns in the hope of getting some magical advice.

Well, the advice I got wasn't magical, but it was just what I needed. Instead of dismissing everything I said, my professor took the time to talk through my concerns with me and offer suggestions to alleviate those concerns (even though he secretly probably thought I was a crazy person). And the more he said, the better I felt. So today, even though I'm 100% sure he'll never read this, I'd like to express my gratitude to him, for making time in his busy schedule to sooth the feelings of a panicking student and help restore her faith in her dreams. As Mark Twain said, "Really great people make you feel that you, too, can become great."