Victoria Faraon
To recap these last two weeks, I have completed one more article and am halfway through my next! The articles following were more tasking than the first, but when I received them, I was in ‘midterm season.’ I’m hoping that since most of my midterm projects and exams are done, I will be able to allocate more concentrated time to the articles!
My second article was definitely longer than my first with plenty more citations to review and fact check. I found a big issue I kept running into was that I couldn’t access some of the more important texts of this article, meaning I could not cross-reference the citations and check for their accuracy. When I spoke with Olivia about the matter during our meeting earlier this week, she told me that all we can do is our best. Sometimes, authors utilize editions that may be out of print or materials that are only available in physical archives. I had this expectation that I would be able to check anything and everything within my schedule and deadlines, but I came to realize quickly that this would not be the case. Nonetheless, I still try to find the exact text the authors cite using EBSCO, JSTOR, and ProQuest.
Furthermore, during our meeting, Olivia let me know that Paul Schmidt thought the introduction I edited and proofread was very well done and that I was on the right track. She had told me that Paul thought I had an “unusual skill,” which was intriguing. I didn’t think much of my abilities to fact-check and closely read for clarity, but I’m very happy to hear I am assisting the publication well. I feel that much more confident in what I’m doing because of the feedback!
According to the schedule, I am assigned four articles for the semester. However, I can take on more if I can, which I will try doing soon. Originally, Olivia wanted me to complete one essay every two weeks, but since we received our articles about two months late, my time has been shortened to just one per week. Olivia reminded me though that I can request more time if need be, though I think I am doing fine completing one article a week. After all, we still plan to go to press sometime at the beginning of December, so that leaves me a little over a month and a half to finish two more articles and a cold read!
As always, I have been glued to the MLA 9 Handbook. I keep a running book of notes I come across while reading, so that has been very helpful during my time with SLI. Onto my next article!
