Work experience and post-grad life

So my work experience placement started last Monday. The first day went rather well, though I didn't get to do any of what they actually want me to do since my IT access wasn't set up yet. Instead, a fellow student and I were asked to have a look through what they call the picking stock, which is where they keep examples of journals so production and other people can have a look at them. The picking stock is not what I would call maintained, so Fellow Student (FS) and I were asked to have a look through, pull out old ones, generally tidy up the place. The thought was that this would only take us a couple hours and it'd be pretty easy. It ended up taking us all day, and resulted in two HUGE stacks of old journals. And when I say "huge" I mean to say that the piles together were enough to fill half a skip/dumpster. It was epic. We were given the option of leaving early and not finishing it, but FS and I were of the opinion that it would be incredibly annoying to keep walking by those shelves, knowing we hadn't finished, so we wanted to get it all out of the way. And we did, so yay.

Tomorrow is Day 2 of my work experience, and I should actually have computer access and be able to do some real work. They have a new online system for their journals (just launched a couple months ago) and FS and I will both be updating the homepages for some of the journals, and adding info.

Classes are going well. There's a proofreading test coming up in Editorial in a few weeks, and we've just realized that we should probably start working on our group projects, so my group will be meeting up this week to discuss it. There's a test coming up in Marketing as well, and we've had to hand in the names of our partners for our next assignment, though we don't yet know what that assignment is. We have our first Production assignment due next week, which involves taking a book, figuring out all the specs (size, binding, colours, paper weight, etc) and writing up a quote request for a printer. In Design we continue to learn about, well, InDesign.

Last week we had our first author talk, and Barbara Trapido, author of such books as The Travelling Hornplayer and JUGGLING, among others, came to speak with us and the undergrads. She was really quite amusing, and I really enjoyed it. She spoke a fair bit about her different editors, and why some were good and some weren't, and I think that information was incredibly useful to all of the students there. I also think it was useful to hear a writer talking about what it is to write. I did Creative Writing as an undergrad, so I already understand how quirky writers are, but most people on the course didn't, and I think it's very valuable to have that insight. If we don't have writers, we don't have books, and publishers are out of a job. We need to understand how they work, and how we can work with them. I'm glad Brookes realizes this and addresses the issue.

This coming week is relatively slow, as it's reading week. This is supposed to mean no classes but, well. Work experience on Monday. On Wednesday we have someone coming from Nielsen BookScan (I will no doubt have an entire entry just about BookScan soon) to teach us how to get in to the system and how it works (in Marketing last week we had a guy come talk to us about all the things it can do and why it's useful, which I honestly found fascinating). My Editorial group is also meeting on Wednesday. Some people have signed up for catch-up InDesign sessions on Friday, but I've passed on that as I feel comfortable with the program. We also have a lot of practice to do for proofreading, and lots of reading to do for Marketing. And as our Production assignment is due next week, my partner and I need to do that as well. And I think there are two SYP events this week as well. So despite it being an easier week than usual, it's still very busy.