Today was my first day at Small Scientific Editing Company.
It went pretty well, though it was super busy. I spent most of the day working on a math paper, which was fairly rough going since I’m not great at math. Lots of the terms and stuff were things about which I had a vague recollection, so I understood the gist of the paper, but at the same time, I don’t have a working knowledge of the math or a grasp of the details. So I corrected the English and battled with the technical jargon as best I could.
Then in the afternoon, I did a physical chemistry paper. I’m also not great at Pchem, but after doing math, it was a welcome relief. And I guess it wasn’t a hardcore physical chemistry paper — it was more material science, which I can do fairly well. The main problem was that I was really rushed to finished the paper, so I just did one pass through, so I probabably missed some stuff. But someone else will read it before it gets sent out, so hopefully they will tidy it up a bit more. I ended up working until 8pm. Fortunately, my company isn’t a typical Japanese company that demands unpaid and pointless overtime as an expected part of the job. We only have to work overtime if we actually have stuff to do, and we get paid for it.
Doing the freelance work, I found that each pass through the paper yields diminishing returns. A 20 page paper might take about 4 hours to do a first edit during which I’d catch about 95% of the mistakes. A second close reading might take 40 minutes to get another 4%. Then a third reading, is basically reading normal speed and correcting the last 1%, which is (hopefully) just nitpicking small bits of style as opposed to grammar or spelling errors.
I’ll greatly improve my efficiency if I can up the percentage of errors I catch on the first pass to say 97 or 98%. Then I could do one more quick pass and be done, and not have to worry that I am leaving tons of mistakes for the final proof by one of the senior editors (which should be really quick).
Today was also my first day dealing with the commute to Tokyo. The trains are pretty crowded, but I think if I get to the station at a good time, I’ll be able to sit on the TX. After that, I take the Hibiya line, on which I am probably going to have to get used to standing since it always seems to be crowded.
sneaky
Sounds pretty cool. Even though teaching is fun, going to an office where you can sit and work quietly is nice. How long does the train ride take?