Monday was a full five hours of demonstrating my organizational skills. It did not entail much. I organized more magazines that were mostly MED (another magazine Steff owns). I got them out of the storage/conference room, put a couple of each issue in the filing cabinet, and put more in the bookshelf organizers. Then I started to clean the long counter in the office, because it was full of junk and needed to be organized. I felt a lot better once it was neat and clean. I’m O.C.D., so sue me.
Wednesday was glorious and reminded me why I love being an English major. I worked from home and proofed the July/August magazine issue. I was given a check-list and looked for things such as grammar, alignment, placement, and flow of the magazine overall. I had so much fun, and that is how I know that this line of work is my calling. Most would find editing a magazine boring, tedious work. I find it enthralling. It might only be my second week into work, but I seriously love this internship.
Thursday. Yet another day on the job has proved to be even more fun. I met Steff at the design director’s house. Ally, Steff, and I went through all of our proof corrections and made changes to the magazine computer document. It took hours, but it was absolutely great to sit around and discuss the English language for hours. This is what I love.
My love for this internship didn’t stop there. Once all of those changes were hammered out, I went back home and waited for the new version to be sent to me through email. At five, the email came through, and I hunkered down for the second round of proofing. I thought that it would be a breeze, but I actually found many more things that needed to be changed that were not caught in the first round of proofing. Published author and mentor Sara Zarr has taught me that your work will never meet your expectations 100 percent. At some point, you have to tell yourself that it is as good as it will ever get and send it to the printers to get published. There will always be things you want to change. So, after this round of proofing, we will be finished. We will call it good and send it to the printers. The July/August issue of ‘Hood Magazine will be published before we know it.
Saturday was a big event day. It started off over in Brandon, SD where “Lunch on the Farm” was held. This year was the seventh year, and Hood Magazine has been there for five years. It was a great event, minus the wind and rain.
We were in charge of a tent where kids would color cow-patterned sheets of paper, and then we rolled them up and taped them so they could put their mouth up to it and moo at the dairy cows. It was something so simple, but the kids loved it.
We were right beside child singer Phil Baker’s tent was. I remember him coming to my school in elementary to sing. So, he’s been around for a long while, and he’s not bad! I had the pleasure of even meeting his son over in our tent. He was drawing amazing pictures of people. I was stunned by how good his pictures were and asked how old he was. Nine! He is only nine and can do more with markers and crayons than I could ever do at age 21!
There was also another nine year old boy who taught me everything there is to know about Texas while he was coloring. He cracked me up. It was a good time.
When that event ended, we headed back to Sioux Falls over to the Sanford Research Center for “Science Fest.” That was pretty fun, as well. It was indoor, thank goodness, so the downpour of rain didn’t affect us. We were in charge of a booth that had a girl’s science project of a solar and wind-powered dollhouse. We also had long sheets of paper on the floor kids could draw on to demonstrate how to save the planet, and we stuck those on the wall behind us. We also, of course, had Hood magazines for people to take home with them.
When that ended, I was ready to go home and relax for the rest of the weekend. But, I got a text from Steff saying I have another round of proofing yet this weekend. I just want to sleep. It has been a fun but tiring week.
