Completely Unnecessary

Given my general lack of tact and/or bluntness (I like to call it ‘refreshing honesty’), you might be surprised to learn that I attempt to keep things of a sensitive nature out of the blog. I would feel terrible if someone googled themselves or stumbled across my blog (and not just because of the generally insipid content) and found something nasty written about them. For this reason, I save most of my most scalding criticisms for emails to Chris and conversations with Sam. And I keep the nasty things about the two of them locked in my bitter little heart. It’s a good system.

So when tell you that I’m about to use this medium for a purpose usually left to rampant gossiping, you’ll know how serious I am.

For the past number of months we’ve been working on publishing a book, in which I have a chapter. We’re doing it all ourselves, and… there’s been a learning curve. This means that about half of us in the group have spent an ungodly number of hours doing the layout, editing, indexing, etc. For some of us, this means stepping out of the roles we were originally filling and taking on extra work. For instance, I wrote the Introduction and that was supposed to be me finished. Instead, I’ve spent at least 20 hours this week sitting in front of Cath’s computer fixing minor and major errors that weren’t caught (or were willfully and repeatedly ignored by the writer).

Interestingly (or perhaps, unsurprisingly), the two authors whose papers were the most difficult to… bring into line, are the two that have made the least effort. Despite completely ignoring her task (which I was left to do), LC has now decided that she is the savior of the project and has decried as crap all of the hard work we’ve put in. When asked last week if she would like to help, she declined because she was ‘too busy’. Also she felt that it was more important for us to take on the work because she already has ‘incredible computer skills’ (including not knowing that .pdfs are edit-proof) and experience in this area. She magnanimously left us to do everything so that we could ‘learn’.

Now, having received the proof, she’s freaking out because there have been so many edits to her essay. Since she knows nothing about the project at this stage, little does she know that most of the edits she’s complaining about were made by a high up in the History Dept. I would kill to be at the meeting I suggested she call with the History prof - she’s going to get slaughtered when she goes in there guns blazing.

Sigh. Why do people feel the need to crow the most about what they lack? It’s a trait that seems to come to us all - but in this case, it’s so egregious that it’s warranted a public mention. LC - I hope you don’t see this, but if you do? You should have been nicer, actually helpful, and less boastful. You dropped the ball on a bunch of people, several of whom had theses to turn in and one of whom was extremely ill, and are now being crass and arrogant to make up for it. While we’re at it: making sense of your run-on sentences was one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to do.

Oh, and PM? Under orders from the Department, we went in and changed all your inexplicable changing tenses, you smug thing. It sucks that we had to do it for you, but at least it’s vaguely readable now.

This concludes bitching about individuals - at least until the editing crew meets up for drinks. That evening’s going to end at the Tankerville - I can just tell.

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