Page 98 - Student: dazed And Confused

change. I wanted the tenses as they were to show that the mental state of the letter-writer
hadn't changed. I think it was quite a difficult concept to grasp because it is a bit different.
They wanted to change stuff mostly in grammar, punctuation and spacing. I was okay with
that because I knew I was bound to have made errors seens as I did it so quickly. Can't wait
to see what it looks like in print

Weeks wise, the anthology didn't take as long to produce as any other part of the
process. However, if you are talking stress levels, effort and hours spent then yes, it was the
most arduous part. I barely slept during the final week. I was the IT person which was
supposed to mean I was receiving the final edited copies from everyone, putting them in the

correct order and sending them to the editor in chief. Didn't quite go to plan,
Some people left it quite late to send me stuff and it was constantly coming at me
from all angles. Then some people hadn't done their jobs by the penultimate session, some
of them even saying they didn't possess the skills for it. More jobs for me. I don't trust
anyone as a rule and I had absolutely no faith fir the group to get it together for the
deadline. I think we made the deadline and I'm planning to strop if we lose marks because
they missed it. I worked hard with no thanks at all, and spent far longer than is healthy tied
to various computers.
Whilst my editing partner and I spent the final session chained to the computer lab

getting stuff done, the rest of the group huddled in the ordinary lecture room and proof­
read all the pieces. There were bound to be spelling and punctuation mistakes so they were
proofed by three different editing groups, then returned to the original editors in case a
mistake had been corrected which was a deliberate mistake. When the pieces had been
scribbled on and crossed out, they brought them into the computer room so the texts could
be corrected on the disk. Truthfully, it wasn't too bad as there were not too many errors
anyway. As my partner and I went through them, we automatically proof-read the things
we were working on, and found a couple of minor alterations that had managed to slip
through the net. Sometimes, your brain does not register a mistake but some-one else will.
I don't know if I proof-read on the screen because I knew there would be more errors or just

because you simply can't help looking at what is on the screen in front of you. I'm glad I did
because it's reduced the amount of mistakes by a tiny amount.

As before stated, certain people were unable to complete their tasks on time. There
were communication problems too, but for both personal and technical reasons. For one
thing, everyone had to rely on email and attachments to get their edited copies to me and I
know how that can break down when it is most needed. In fact, I think email positively
enjoys breaking down. I wonder if real editors have to rely on such inventions, I think it
must actually make things harder. Also some people had no contact information for others

so they had no way of saying if there had been a problem. Some people did not possess the
appropriate skills to fulfil their task/s. Until challenged, they did not say and if eel this was a
factor in this being a rush job at the end. There weren't any real problems that we could