Editing vs. Grading

I don't think I've mentioned that I've been doing a bit of editing/proofreading - something I love and have to say that I think I'm pretty good at. And editing isn't the same as grading: I get to suggest changes without assigning any evaluation to those changes. How refreshing!

One big document was a legal thing: report about a child custody dispute. The other document was a manuscript: novel/memoir that moved me enough to email my own mother (the protagonist's mother dies of ovarian cancer). For both of these projects, I did have to call my pal who's an M.D. to check out the "facts" about specific medical terminology. She never fails to answer my questions, and she's one of the smartest people I know.

Here's where playing softball comes in handy for an academic: softball friends know a lot about a lot of things, and I can ask my softball pals (with whom I've been playing for probably 20 years) about a range of topics: medicine, other health care topics, social services, the phone company, high school teaching, private school administration, small business ownership, computer-geekiness, physical therapy, city administration, accounting. These are all specialities of my teammates.


My message? Anyone who teaches in a college should play a team sport. :-)