Homework of one kind or another

Well, I’ve gotten two out of three of my homework assignments done for the big AMWA meeting coming up in Atlanta. I’ve looked over the last assignment, and am just not sure what the assignment has to do with the class. I am also grateful that I can submit it via e-mail as I don’t know when I’ll be able to work on it. Did I say these assignments are due on Tuesday?? Did I say we are headed to Louisiana on Monday?? Did I say we are still in the middle of both a bathroom and kitchen renovation??

Ah, but, I did finish painting the bathroom today, and now all it needs is tiling, trim, and installation of the vanity and toilet–did I say all it needs? And if I hadn’t broken my glasses today taking the above mentioned homework assignments to the post-office, I’d have a good chance of getting the kitchen paint finished tomorrow. Instead, I’ll get the first of two coats on and spend a couple of hours at the eye doctor tomorrow.

A Lesson Learned

Okay, I just finished my first official assignment from my new client. I’m working with a company that edits manuscripts written by non-native English language speakers and intended for English language scientific journals. Sounds good, right? Yeah, it will be, once I figure out how to estimate how hard a particular editing project will be!

I spent about 30 minutes looking through the introduction of the manuscript to try and determine the difficulty level of the editing job. Getting this right is important, because that difficulty level is what I base my fee on. The intro looked pretty good, so I estimated a mid-range difficulty level. I really should have looked through the methods, too. Oh. My. God. It took me 10 hours (over three days!) to slog through the whole thing!

I really lost some money on this one. Oh, well. I guess I’ll have to consider it a lesson learned and move on, now won’t I?