Week 6

So honestly I haven't done much over the past week for my internship. I was out of town for a long weekend and I've been super busy. But actually that turned out to be a good thing because the articles Matt sent me to copyedit have been bumped back a whole issue. He sent me new articles on Monday that will be in the next issue. They're all on the Olympics, so I'm super excited because I love the Olympics! So they should be much more exciting to read.

Anyway, I went into the office today. Val is doing the copyediting for the first two articles and the book review that we have so far for the IJSF. So today when I went in, she already has them all done. We went over the and she explained a few of the comments she made and we talked about a few of her pet peeves in writing. Those would be using while when you mean although, using since when you mean because, putting only in the wrong place, being capital letter happy, less v. fewer, and using where when you're not actually talking about a place. She's very, very good at picking up little tiny things, and I think that I'm learning a lot from her.

Matt did not have much for me this week. When Val emails me the copyedited versions of the articles, I am going to email them to the authors. I am also supposed to email Dennis to ask if he knows the timeline for getting the final two articles for the journal and if he has a table of contents/preferred order for the journal. So I'll be using my professional emailing skills which is good!

Other than that, I'm just working on more coyediting.

Week 5

I'm a day late on my blogging. Sorry!

Anyway, I went in to my internship yesterday. Val was sick, so I only talked to Matt. I wasn't there for very long because there wasn't much to update me on. I did get some feedback on the copyediting I did on the journal articles. There was really only one mistake that I was consistently making. In the reference section, when there are only two authors there should still be a comma between them. Other than that Matt was very happy with how everything went. He thought that I was looking very in depth with things like parallelism. He actually even said that they would consider using me for some freelance work after I graduate.

I also got my GroupWise email account that I'm going to be using to communicate with the copyeditors, editors, authors, etc. for the journal I'm working with. Right now we have two of the articles and the book review for the journal.

Since I don't have a ton of things to do for the journal right now, Matt gave me some articles to copyedit. They're for a journal that's coming out six months from now, so they are just something to fill my time with.

Week 4

Has anyone else noticed that the time stamp on the blog is always a few hours early? I like that. It makes me feel like I was slightly more on top of things than I actually am.

Anyway, I actually went into my internship this week. Yay! Val showed me how to apply for a copyright for the books. It's a pretty easy online form to fill out, and then you get an offical copyright for your book. But I also learned three things. 1.) Most people that write books fo FIT give the publishing rights to WVU in their contracts. 2.) All work that is "tangible" is copyrighted, even if the author does not apply for a copyright. This includes emails and papers and all that jazz. I thought that was pretty interesting. 3.) The copyright laws have changed a lot over the years, and how long they are copyrighted for depends on when it was writted. But FIT doesn't have to worry much about enfringing on the laws because they do textbooks and journals where people directly cite and reference the articles. It's more of a big deal in literary stuff.

And then I talked to Matt. Who told me that I am going to be the point person for the May edition of the International Journal of Sport Finance. They're going to farm out the copyediting and I'm going to check over it to see if comments are appropriate/can be fixed without consulting the author. And then I'm going to be emailing the authors back and forth. Then I get to talk to Liz who is the journal's designer and does all of the typesetting. Somewhere along the way I'm also going to be doing the proofreading. So I'm pretty much going to be seeing this through from start to finish. I can't start yet because we only have one of four articles because this is a newer journal and they don't have a stock of articles, and Matt is getting me a GroupWise account. This sounds like a big project, but I'm excited to get to be involved in the whole process.

Oh, and right now I also have a chapter for a book to copyedit. Matt also has a bunch of articles that if I need more stuff to do could be copyedited, but they really don't need them done for another 8 months. So he told me to email him if I would like a few to keep me busy.

Val and I also had a bonding moment today when we realized that she grew up in the town that I'm from! Small world.

Writing Assignment 2

I find that I do my best writing during the week at night and also on Sundays during the day. During week days I never have enough time to concentrate because I have a lot going on. So I never do work until at least after dinner, if even that early. Saturdays I sleep in and then I just want to lounge around, but I feel that Sundays are days when I can be really productive and get a lot done.

I do my best thinking right before I go to sleep. I think it's just because I'm not a focused on everything, and I can just let my mind wander. But I suppose that the place I do my best actual work in is at my desk. I don't have a laptop because I hate the keyboards, so I do all of my work in my bedroom at my desk. I don't know if it's all that helpful/inspiring or if it's just a necessity thing. But it works just fine, so I don't see a need to change.

I like to have a pen and some Post-it notes around when I write, so that if I need to check on something I can write myself a little reminder. Other than that, I can't think of any objects that are really important for me to have around. I guess that I do like to have some music so that I don't get bored. I always need background noise in my life, no matter what I'm doing.

These habits say that I'm a bit of a scatterbrain and that concentrating can be a challenge for me. I try to say that I work best under pressure, but that may just because under pressure is the only time I work. But I suppose that having a routine place that I work is a positive thing. And the fact that I don't really need anything in particular, and that noise isn't an issue for me is good because I could probably work any place that I happened to be.

Week 3

So I've been relly sick for the past week, which is why I didn't blog on Wednesdy. On Wednesday I also did not go to my weekly internship meeting with Val because I could not get out of my bed. But I did call her, and she was really understanding about it. She was also really understanding about the fact that my articles were not quite done being edited yet. And yet I've stayed sick and busy with things to do.

So here it is Sunday, and I am working my little fingers to the bone so that Matt & Val will have seven completely edited articles in their inboxes when they arrive to work on Monday monring. I feel really bad about being four days late on my not written in stone deadline.

The editing is still going well. I feel like the majority of what I do is add commas. Glamorous, I know. And at this exact moment I cannot bring into my head what Scott Wible told me I'm supposed to be using my blog to do. Think about what I'm going to put in my portfolio? Think about the skills I'm developing? Really, I can't remember.

But I have one more article to do, and other classes with daunting work, so off I go.