death by sunday
Some days just seriously take it out of you. I'm not really sure why that happened yesterday, but when I got home, all I wanted to do was crawl into bed and not move for a very long time.
The day started out so well, too: I got a phone call from
gitan telling me that she was in Asheville for the weekend with friends on a skiing trip. I tried to convince them to come to Chapel Hill, but it would have more than doubled their trip, I realized later. (Don't worry, precious.. I had to study this afternoon anyway. I also totally understand the whole indecisive friend pickle.) So while I didn't get to see her, I got an idea: Before the semester's over, I'm going to drive to Georgia and visit her and
rainstar207 (and whoever else is available! hint hint, georgia people!) for a weekend. It's been way too long, and it's not that far from Chapel Hill to Atlanta/Athens.
So that was pretty much the high point. Then I did some assorted tasks around here, got through a significant chunk of my readings for my midterm, and spent way too much money buying supplies, as I seem to have run out of everything at once. Great. I had a delicious sandwich for dinner, even, before I went to work.
But it was editing that really took it out of me last night. What bothered me most was reading this, I think. This past weekend, there was a complete freak accident on our campus that left one student dead and another hospitalized. Everyone is pretty shaken by it, myself included. So to get a story like that at midnight (our deadline is 12:30 at the latest, but I'm supposed to be finished by midnight to make sure there's time to send the paper electronically to the printer in Durham) and to have to make sure it's absolutely perfect (out of respect to the students involved, all of their friends and families and loved ones and the campus community as a whole), that it's as truthful an account as possible, is a little stressful. I was also completely exhausted by that point, because all night things had been coming to me in a worse state than usual. I got headlines and subheads that didn't agree. I got terribly written headlines. I got terrible writing, period. I got style errors like crazy. I even got "scarves" spelled "skarfs." WTF, mate? When so much of that stuff is wrong by the time it gets to me (after being through many other reads before), there's a much higher chance of mistakes and inaccuracies getting through into print.
Call me a perfectionist; I probably am one (as are most copy editors, I think.. there's probably something wrong with all of us who want to do this as a career). It's just hard not to take responsibility for the final product when you are (and I HATE this term because it's so cliche) the "last line of defense" between the newspaper and the public. When the newspaper people let their standards slip (and I know it's not all their fault; they're under a lot of pressure, too) it can be impossible for people like me to make everything better. I'm not responsible for the quality of the entire paper, and I'm just one person -- but usually people in my position are only noticed when something wrong gets printed. Never mind all the bad English we caught the night before and changed to make the writers sound more intelligent. Never mind our clever turns of phrase in headlines that draw readers' attention to a story in the first place. Never mind our encyclopedic knowledge. It's possible for all of that to get thrown out the window as soon as someone's name gets misspelled or someone misreports a fact.
So Sunday night was one of those days. When I finally got the front page to look over and one of the victim's names was misspelled in a prominent place, I almost lost it. When they give you stuff like this, there's only so much you can do. I think I tried my best, but I know I'm going to get an e-mail later from the deputy managing editor cataloguing all the mistakes she spotted in the paper today. It's times like that that my job is thankless.
But somehow, I keep going back. There really might be something wrong with me.
Now I have to study for my midterm; by the time I got home last night, the last thing I wanted to do was learn about international forms of journalism. Seven hours later I'm feeling better. At least less frustrated. Oi.
The day started out so well, too: I got a phone call from
gitan telling me that she was in Asheville for the weekend with friends on a skiing trip. I tried to convince them to come to Chapel Hill, but it would have more than doubled their trip, I realized later. (Don't worry, precious.. I had to study this afternoon anyway. I also totally understand the whole indecisive friend pickle.) So while I didn't get to see her, I got an idea: Before the semester's over, I'm going to drive to Georgia and visit her and
rainstar207 (and whoever else is available! hint hint, georgia people!) for a weekend. It's been way too long, and it's not that far from Chapel Hill to Atlanta/Athens.
So that was pretty much the high point. Then I did some assorted tasks around here, got through a significant chunk of my readings for my midterm, and spent way too much money buying supplies, as I seem to have run out of everything at once. Great. I had a delicious sandwich for dinner, even, before I went to work.
But it was editing that really took it out of me last night. What bothered me most was reading this, I think. This past weekend, there was a complete freak accident on our campus that left one student dead and another hospitalized. Everyone is pretty shaken by it, myself included. So to get a story like that at midnight (our deadline is 12:30 at the latest, but I'm supposed to be finished by midnight to make sure there's time to send the paper electronically to the printer in Durham) and to have to make sure it's absolutely perfect (out of respect to the students involved, all of their friends and families and loved ones and the campus community as a whole), that it's as truthful an account as possible, is a little stressful. I was also completely exhausted by that point, because all night things had been coming to me in a worse state than usual. I got headlines and subheads that didn't agree. I got terribly written headlines. I got terrible writing, period. I got style errors like crazy. I even got "scarves" spelled "skarfs." WTF, mate? When so much of that stuff is wrong by the time it gets to me (after being through many other reads before), there's a much higher chance of mistakes and inaccuracies getting through into print.
Call me a perfectionist; I probably am one (as are most copy editors, I think.. there's probably something wrong with all of us who want to do this as a career). It's just hard not to take responsibility for the final product when you are (and I HATE this term because it's so cliche) the "last line of defense" between the newspaper and the public. When the newspaper people let their standards slip (and I know it's not all their fault; they're under a lot of pressure, too) it can be impossible for people like me to make everything better. I'm not responsible for the quality of the entire paper, and I'm just one person -- but usually people in my position are only noticed when something wrong gets printed. Never mind all the bad English we caught the night before and changed to make the writers sound more intelligent. Never mind our clever turns of phrase in headlines that draw readers' attention to a story in the first place. Never mind our encyclopedic knowledge. It's possible for all of that to get thrown out the window as soon as someone's name gets misspelled or someone misreports a fact.
So Sunday night was one of those days. When I finally got the front page to look over and one of the victim's names was misspelled in a prominent place, I almost lost it. When they give you stuff like this, there's only so much you can do. I think I tried my best, but I know I'm going to get an e-mail later from the deputy managing editor cataloguing all the mistakes she spotted in the paper today. It's times like that that my job is thankless.
But somehow, I keep going back. There really might be something wrong with me.
Now I have to study for my midterm; by the time I got home last night, the last thing I wanted to do was learn about international forms of journalism. Seven hours later I'm feeling better. At least less frustrated. Oi.