Job
A Short Explaination of the Publishing Company:
First of all, the foundation of my company rests on the fact that text books, instruction manuals, and all other versions of non-fiction informative books have a shelf life of around 3-5 years. We don't expect any books to sell after the 5 year mark, we don't even factor that possibility into our sales estimates. Assumedly, after 5 years, we've either published a new edition, all the people who want the book have it already, or it's no longer accurate. We actually pulp the books. This...for an english major...it hurts. But irt's the truth.
I work with manuscripts in the Science, Technical, and Medical division. Meaning that I work with authors who never ever bothered to learn how to write in school. If they're anything like my sisters, they were too busy building paper models of the tendon system in the pelvis or reading up on string theory to bother with, say, learning grammar. So, needless to say, they can't fucking write.
Which is great for me. As a freelance copy-editor, I make my money relying on the fact that I don't know what they're saying, but jesus christ, THEY have no idea how to say it. It's quite symbiotic. I get to spare the world from horrible writing, and they get to sound like they're as well-spoken as they are intelligent.
The fact is, I help people correct their words in teaching something I'll never understand. They will NEVER learn to write. I will NEVER learn mass spectrometry. (I have no clue. It's like....charts....of cells....and....ions? No bloody idea. We're taking a lot of books on the subject, though, so apparently it's important.)
I'm reminded of what my mother told me when I started freaking out about moving to NYC for an internship. She confessed that there were still times--as an accounting professor, working on the ditorial board of the top journal on the subject, creating a low-income tax clinic on a f-ing whim, and being an all-aroiund genius--That she's terrified someone will find out she has no CLUE what she's doing. Like after 20 years in the profession, SOMEONE will realize she's making it up as she goes along.
I get the same feeling when I give advice. Or talk with men I'm dating. Or get dressed in the morning. The nameless fear that someone out there will stop me and say 'Wait a sec...you have no idea how to act like a competent adult, do you?'
Nope.
Thank god I can usually fake it.