Freelancing ... and students

I am about to throttle the young woman who has been my point of contact with the NYPL in the freelance editing job I've been doing for them. She keeps telling me that X is the date when everything has to go to press, but then she sends me stuff to read, so I have to ask, "Is there time for me to read this and for any changes to be made?" And she says yes ... and then we do the whole round again. She defensively said that they pad schedules for the curators (granted) and hope the curators follow the schedule (of course) and can't predict what might happen when the curators don't (understood), but she doesn't seem to realize I'm not a curator. I need to know the real, true, actual, drop-dead deadlines, so I know what's expected of me. Can we add a comma? Do a whole-scale recasting of an awkward sentence?

And because they've been telling me that everything was due yesterday, I've been working too fast, so I'm still finding mistakes I should have found in the first round, and probably would have, if I hadn't felt like they were telling me the building was on fire.

Well, oh well. They'll either hire me again or they won't.

Meanwhile, materials that were supposed to come in from the Met yesterday still haven't arrived, and I'm looking at that clock tick down to when everything needs to be complete--and I know my friend there gives me real dates, dates I have to take seriously, so that ticking clock actually means something.

And instead of twiddling my thumbs (which I would prefer to do, really--or the mental equivalent thereof), I've been reading through student responses to readings. Generally, although the writing is at times atrocious, after the one reading that they all fell apart over (which I believe I ranted about the other day), they're getting the ideas and generally they have something to say about the ideas, which is rather the points. They're starting to understand the idea of "discussion," though I just realized my analogy may be meaningless to then. I told them to think of it as sitting around a table with cups of coffee (or whatever), talking about the reading--but I bet they've never done that, even as part of a study group. Kids these days.

Anyway, we'll see what lands in my email inbox tomorrow: more from the NYPL? Something from the Met? Neither? And whatever lands, I'll work on it for a while, then shift gears to reading/responding to more student work, then back again. And I am trying very hard not to get too wound up about the essays that are going to arrive--if they arrive at all--on the 29th. I kinda wish I'd forced them to work over the break, but who am I kidding. They wouldn't have. They'd still have put everything off until the last minute. Well, what can I do. I can't make them do anything; I can just see what they do and provide feedback--including grades that will surely shock the shit out of them, but that's part of my job, too.

I think I'm toast for the night. It's about time to shift gears into dinner mode--and I'm going out with mother, sister, and sister's boyfriend, so that will be nice. It's not a bad life, all in all.