 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
Meeting of the minds
They’re back: Alumni return for Spring Reunion Weekend
International programs director David Coker will retire this fall
Advertising prof named interim journalism dean
Kudos
April retirees
Campus Closeup
Publication Specialist III
Classics Department
YEARS IN CURRENT POSITION: 21.
JOB DESCRIPTION: “I am the chief factotum working on the Classical Outlook, the journal of the American Classical League, which is edited by Richard LaFleur, head of the classics department. Every day is different for me. I may spend the day writing letters to contributors, or logging in books and sending them off to reviewers, or paying bills and working on budget reports, or working with advertisers designing ads. And then I’ll drop everything and go into production mode. My major responsibility is producing camera-ready pages of the journal. This involves preliminary editing of copy for good grammar and editorial consistency, proofreading everything umpteen times, and finally laying out the pages, printing out the final copy and delivering an issue to the printer.”
MOST CHALLENGING PART OF MY JOB: “Staying on schedule. We publish four issues in an academic year. I am extremely proud of the fact that in 21 years we have never been more than a month late. That has to be some sort of record for an academic journal.”
MOST REWARDING PART OF MY JOB: “Two things, I think. First and foremost, the people I work for and with--in the classics department and the American Classical League--are wonderful. Secondly, the job itself is one I am constantly having to grow into. My responsibilities now bear almost no resemblance to what I was originally hired to do. When we first started, we dealt exclusively with paper and the marking up thereof. Now most submissions arrive by e-mail; I am laying out pages on a computer screen, tearing my hair out over graphics, and doing all sorts of things it never occurred to me that I could do. I have never had a boring day.”
OFF-THE-JOB INTERESTS: “I am a voracious, eclectic reader--the quintessential nerd who reads the back of the cereal box if there’s nothing else around. Last year I read the complete set (16 volumes, I think) of Byron’s correspondence and then started in on the other side of the equation--people who wrote to him. There’s a lot about Byron not to like, but his letters are terrific bits of prose filled with gossip, and humor, and rather acute reflections on what was going on socially, politically, and economically in the early 1800s.
A BOOK I’D RECOMMEND TO OTHERS: “Bill Bryson’s Notes from a Small Island. I bought it for my English husband for Christmas, and then laughed myself silly when I read it. Bryson is an American who lived and worked in England for 20 years, before returning to America. Notes is partly a travelogue of his last tour around the island and partly a commentary on the English persona seen through American eyes. It’s good fun.”
FAVORITE MUSIC: “Here’s a real confession. My husband loves classical music; my daughter will listen to anything as long as it is loud. For a long time I lived with Beethoven rattling the windows at one end of the house and Widespread Panic blaring from the other. Now my husband’s stereo has moved to his new workshop, my daughter has moved to San Diego, and I am enjoying the sound of
silence.”
AN ISSUE THAT CONCERNS ME IN TODAY’S SOCIETY: “The tyranny of technology--I have a love-hate relationship going here. On the one hand I am in awe of all that we can do these days and the speed that we do it in; on the other, I often think that the tail is wagging the dog. Just about the time I feel capable and comfortable with my software tools, they are deemed obsolete and we are all learning something new again, running faster and faster just to stay in the same place. I think it’s a fairly common complaint--that we’re spending more of our time mastering the technology than doing our jobs. And it worries me what’s to become of those people who aren’t keeping up with all of this. Will there be jobs for them? How will they live?”
--Ryan Crowe
UGA Home ] Admissions ] Directories ] Sports ] Alumni ] Weather ]
Search this site ] Search UGA sites ]
Developed by University Communications News Bureau at the University of Georgia.
Beth Roberts: Columns editor, Juliett Dinkins: Columns managing editor,
Janet Beckley: Columns art director.
This site works best with the latest version of
Netscape Navigator 4.0 and Microsoft Internet Explorer 4.0.