Found a stack of my boss's work on my desk this morning, some expected, some not. I wish she'd told me I was going to be doing her editing as well as getting her journal into press. Eh, whatever. I'm an editin' fool, bring it on.

Crap. Power's already back on!

I should probably surf the internet a bit longer, just in case the power goes off again, right?

Found a stack of my boss's work on my desk this morning, some expected, some not. I wish she'd told me I was going to be doing her editing as well as getting her journal into press. Eh, whatever. I'm an editin' fool, bring it on.

Ugh. I keep getting emails today with feedback about what I did wrong. And I *do* want to know when (for example) my stupid typo made it into print so that I'm more careful (although, seriously, we have proofreaders -- I used to be one! -- so I hope they all got emailed about this, too). But I really don't see the point of emailing me a marked-up PDF and prefacing it with "I know in most of these cases, comma placement is subjective, but you may want to review this." Well shit, if it's subjective, and I change my comma placement to match this proofreader, will I just get another email when a *different* proofreader doesn't like my subjective commas? (And I didn't even mention to her that when I was proofreading I got explicitly told to not change subjective things like commas and only change definitively wrong things [like typos, hello]. But apparently it's okay if this proofreader does change all the damn commas?)

Dislike. Considering new career as a village idiot.

Considering new career as a village idiot.

How much does it pay? I'm still considering running away to join the circus.

I have been to the mailroom to pick up my packages from eShakti. I need to try on everything tonight to see what fits, but I kind of want to do it now. I've excavated my inbox to the point where I now have zero desire to work on anything that's left because it's all complicated headaches.

Subjective, hell. The commas go where I say they go.

Wait, that's the definition of subjective, isn't it? I may have confused "subjective" with "do it my way".

I keep threatening to run away and join the circus to get some peace and quiet.

There is nothing subjective about commas.

Yes, small child (and multiple pets) means we're going with the "slap some athlete's-foot cream on it" theory. I figure if it doesn't clear up in a few more days, then I go to the doctor.

I answered some work emails from my phone this morning, but one person keeps bouncing back, even though it's the right address...and I replied-all on another thing and she was like 'yeah, that's weird, send it again?" so I have no idea what's going on.

Gah, my boss did it again -- short version is that I edited a commentary that basically said "The study by [Author 1], published in this issue, showed a median value of 5 years. This is similar to a report by [Author 2], who showed an average of 4.5 years."

Boss changed "average" to "median" because Author 1 reported a median. But we don't know if Author 2 reported a median, because it wasn't a study we published -- it was just a reference cited, which we don't read because we don't have infinite time. So since we don't know what the content of Author 2's reference says, I didn't change "average" to "median" just to be matchy.

I even explained that to Boss (in a more professional manner), and she said, "Well, they were inconsistent, so we'll see if they notice is when they return them!"

I don't think she even read what I said. Was I not clear? The commentary was on Author 1, whose article is published in the same issue of JAMA, so we can literally read it with our eyes and see it uses the word "median" verbatim. But because Author 2 is just a reference from another journal, we didn't read it and therefore can't know whether "average" is correct or not, so we can't just change the word because we want them to match.

I feel like everything I'm saying is coming out in some other language today. How is that not clear? We can't just change things for which we have no reference to confirm it should be changed!

I get that I make mistakes and Boss needs to give me feedback on that, but that wasn't a mistake -- it was a deliberate choice based on the information we could access.

Seriously, I'm ready for that job as the village idiot. At least no one can tell me I'm doing it wrong.

Psst, if you are correct about things, you can't really be the village idiot.