To the left of my work desk is a utility shelf, on which rest several boxes and storage containers (we had to downsize when we moved into our current home, and we were not very good at it).

Taped to said utility shelf is an 8 1/2-by-11-inch copy of my all-time favorite poster, which is “believed to be” in the public domain according to the US government website on which I found it.

The poster, which appears to have been created by a very artistically gifted child, depicts a large orange fish (with green eyelids) smoking a cigarette, through which is a fish hook. Very faint puffs of smoke can be seen above the cigarette. The fish looks extremely morose, as if it is thinking, “Why me? Why am I so addicted?” The big yellow letters in the upper right-hand corner read, “DON’T YOU GET HOOKED!”

Hooked. Get it?

I first saw this poster in the nurse’s office in junior high school. I thought it was so beautiful—very artsy. By the time I went back to class, I was in love with it. The poster was also in the nurse’s office in my high school (I guess the county schools had bought them in bulk). Years later, I had a friendly acquaintance who had seen the same poster in a Baltimore County school. She, too, thought it was beautiful.

So, why I am going on about a poster with a fish smoking a cigarette?

The copy next to my desk inspires me. I just love having it there. I named the fish Fred, and sometimes, between tasks, I talk to him. “Life is hard,” I will say. “Isn’t it, Fred?”

Or maybe, “AI is so scary, Fred. Don’t you think so?”

I am well aware that Fred cannot move, let alone answer me. But I still find it therapeutic to breathe a single sentence to him once in a while. Some people talk to their pets; I, not having any pets, talk to my poster copy.

How do you cope with stress while you are working?

We need to stop putting down people who work slowly (or more slowly than we do).

I am not talking about people who are lazy and work slowly even though they could work faster. These folks are another whole animal. I am talking about people who work slowly because they are meticulous or because they have a disability of some kind.

Some people have invisible disabilities that cause them to work slowly, and these people are often the victims of bullying in the workplace (and other places) because others cannot see the disabilities that slow them down.

Even fast-food jobs are not ideal for these people, for these jobs are just that: FAST.

One such workplace where people who work slowly are often discriminated against is the scientific laboratory. In the industry, a lab worker is expected to work quickly and correctly; in other words, the employee is expected to work efficiently. A meticulous lab worker may be fired from an industrial lab if they cannot fulfill a quota of, for example, X cell transfections completed in one day. Never mind that this worker has never contaminated a vial in their career or if every single transfection they have completed has yielded wonderful results. “We are not paying you to take your time.”

Even in academic labs, pressure is often put on meticulous workers to “speed it up,” because “we only have a year and a half left on our grant. You want a job in a year and a half, don’t you?”

Such bullying and taunting is, simply put, ableist behavior.  And sadly, it is not limited to science. If you have ever scoured the job search engines while looking for employment, you have probably noticed that seemingly 80 to 90 percent of jobs advertised require candidates to “be able to thrive in a fast-paced environment.” This is not good news for the meticulous or disabled person who works slowly.

Do you know anyone who works rather slowly but regularly produces quality work? Are you that person?

I am in the process of learning a new skill: Adobe Acrobat.

I’ve used Acrobat Reader for years and I know well how to save a Word document as a PDF, but during the last year or so, I have used Acrobat in my editing and I am continuing to learn how to use it to do more tasks.

When I edited PDFs for my friend’s company a year ago, I learned how to place comments in “sticky notes” right at the site of an issue. Doing this is as simple as clicking the picture of the sticky note, clicking where on the PDF I want the comment to go, and then typing “Please place a period at the end of this sentence,” or “Please add ‘stop’ before ‘here,’” or whatever is needed. When the comments are all lined up on the right side of the screen with their page numbers indicated, I like that. When they are scattered over the page, not so much.

What I discovered earlier this year, thanks to the wonderful webinar given by Ronane Lloyd, is that there are lots of other things that Acrobat can do. For example, I can highlight text using different colors. I can mark where I want to insert text, and then insert text within a bubble that corresponds to that mark. I can delete, underline, and strikethrough text.

I can also draw on the PDF, although I have yet to figure out why I would need to do this (I’m sure there are reasons). I can draw a line, an arrow, a polygon, or a cloud, to name a few. On the “dummy” PDFs on which I have been practicing, I have been having quite a bit of fun with the drawing tools.

The “pointer” tool, as I call it, is the most important. I must click on it when I finish using a selected tool in order to stop using that tool.

Just about every industry needs someone who can edit PDFs, and I am making myself even more marketable by learning this. Just a little more practice and I will feel confident enough to list the skill on my resume.

What new skills are you learning at the moment?

“How,” you may ask, “did a biochemist like you become an editor?”

There were several “springboards” that catapulted me into my current life as an editor.

The first one was back in high school. My senior year, I was on the staff of the school newspaper, where the faculty advisor had assigned me the role of copyeditor. Back then, I did not know what a style manual even was. However, I was excellent at spelling, punctuation, and catching typos even back then, and the advisor called me “one of the best we’ve ever had.”

It turned out that I chose to study the biological sciences rather than journalism, and my forte in writing and editing did not surface again until I  was in graduate school and wrote my master’s thesis. I wrote it so well that my advisor said that I should go into scientific writing instead of lab work. Alas, I did not listen to her, and after eight years of steadily working in labs, I found myself unemployed, thanks to an unbelievably ableist system.

To add skills to my resume, I began volunteering in the office of my church, and somehow after some time, it became known that I was extremely good at catching typos, misspellings, and such. So I was given the weekly programs to edit. Not only was I good at this, but I enjoyed it very much. Seeing how well I edited the programs, the staff began giving me other materials to edit—Bible study booklets, the staff handbook, a guide for children’s area volunteers. They continually told me how wonderful I was at editing. My highlight there was writing a letter to the state authorities so that the church’s bookkeeper could get a concealed carry permit to protect her when she took thousands of dollars with her to the bank.

In 2018, I took all these things into consideration and decided to be an independent editor. This is when I did research and found out about the Editorial Freelancers Association (EFA), which gave me a ton of valuable information on starting an editing business. After a few months, I learned of the American Copy Editors Society (ACES), which was for folks who did exactly what I did. I joined both organizations and met really great people. And the rest, as they say, is history.

Fellow editors, what was your springboard into doing what you do?

I have said it before and I will say it again: Running an editing business is “feast or famine,” to use a tired cliché.

This summer has been one prolonged famine.

I have gotten a few small assignments here and there, so thankfully, there have not been any months where my earnings have been zero. But there have not been any large assignments since May.

So what have I been doing with myself during this dry spell? More than one would think.

First and foremost, I have been reaching out to potential new clients. I go on the websites of R1 universities in the US and find the contact info for the chair of their biochemistry (or similar) department. Then I send that person an email explaining my services and how my editing could increase the chances of their department’s papers being accepted for publication. I have contacted a great many department chairs in this way. Cold emails can be frightening, but they often are a necessity.

Another good use of my time this summer was my taking Kristine Thornley’s online, self-paced course in medical editing and AMA style, which was given through the EFA (one of my professional organizations). Sure, I had done some medical editing before, but during the course, I was so surprised at what I did not know. For example, an author must not use the term “baby”; they must use the term “infant” or “child” instead. Another thing of which I was unaware is that the apostrophe-s is not used in disease names; it’s Parkinson disease, not Parkinson’s disease. I learned a ton of information about tables and figures, as well. If you do medical editing or want to learn it, I highly recommend Ms. Thornley’s course. Students get 364 days to complete it, but I did it in four months.

Finally, I’ve been active on LinkedIn, posting original content and reposting others’ content and commenting. This is how I have been getting noticed (well, word of mouth has worked better for me, but a lot of people want to connect with me on LinkedIn).

Are you going through a “famine” right now? If so, how are you using the time to your advantage?