Monday, March 03, 2008 Post Office By Luis A. Quibranza III
GRADUATION is right under my nose, and it has never smelled this sweet.
Right after my internship stint, I’ve been invited to do some “assistant editing and writing work” for this newspaper. I admit that I report to the office for only three hours a day, four days a week. So with this out in the open, I could be given the “most undeserving-to-be-called-an-employee” citation. But everyone starts somewhere. And so I begin my little story with how I am faring so far.
With my line of work needing the constant connection to the “interweb”, I can’t help but post a little something from the office. Lessons learned perhaps.
Editing stories and columns can do three things for you.
First, it can add to your vocabulary. Avowals, Plethora, Appliquéd, Congruous? These seemingly-random combination of characters plucked out from the English alphabet have forced me to visit my favorite online dictionary site and check if these words truly exist and are not just inventions of writers.
But much to the confirmation of my expected result anyway, they do exist. And you see, it is humbling indeed to know that I don’t know, which brings me to my second lesson.
Humility. The job is very humbling. Editing, i now realize, requires a hefty amount of bookish-intellect. And I’ve never been your dude with killer study habits. I’m not the type who racks up straight flat one’s in a semester or collects certificates for academic accomplishments.
I think my bosses are still figuring out if I’m just putting up a “show” when I tell them that I don’t know much about editing. Because truth be told, I DO NOT know much. But they’re really awesome, helping me learn in every way they can. Right now, I can imagine my English teachers confused about the thought that I am being trained as an “editor.” But I guess this is what training is all about:
A skilled man requires less or no training anymore. But the man he was before today must have acquired a great deal of skill from training.
AND the third lesson: this job gives me an “obsessive-compulsive” tendencies, even when I’m simply writing a supposedly informal write-up like this for my blog site, which by the way, is bitter-sweet.
So to sum up in the spirit of Lent, this job is a lot like praying the rosary. It’s full of mysteries.
(Luis, 20 ¾, is a soon-to-be [under the mercy of his minors teachers] Masscom graduate of the University of San Jose-Recoletos. He’s a songwriter and plays the piano, guitar, bass and drums. He is addicted to the thrill of jet-skiing, but despises being left alone in the middle of the ocean. He is currently serving as a servant-leader in GenRev: a youth ministry, and claims that he was supposed to be born in the late ‘50s, and then grow older enough to enjoy ‘70s music. This and other stories are in jjquibz.multiply.com)
