Today I feel like a pesky intern. I have been wandering around looking for work to do, but no one seems to have any for me. During my search I even wandered into an important meeting which I was promptly thrown out of. Incidentally, I have also been thrown out of my own office because my office mate is conducting a phone interview.

So I gave up on the search for work, got some orange chicken from Panda Express, and I have settled into a co-worker’s office for a nice, long blog post about life, love, the meaning of the universe, editing, and the summer. (But mostly the last two.)

I’ve noticed something since I started working here as a writer and editor. Even when I’m not at work, I now have the urge to edit everything. I am officially the person who everyone hates because I am always pointing out mistakes on signs and brochures and being really snotty and condescending about it (despite the fact that I, myself, absolutely depend on Microsoft Word’s automatic spell check). But I come across about 50 things each day I want to edit. From Facebook statuses to restaurant menus to the student newspaper (which got my last name and major wrong in my last of 60 columns) to the fortune cookie I got the other day telling me “it is time to moving forward.” I just want to fix the world’s mistakes.

And speaking of moving forward, this is totally unrelated but I am excited to continue working here as we move on into summer. Summertime in Bloomington is wonderful with most of the students gone, and it will be nice to have a reason to be in town every day. I am also excited for summer because I just opened my fortune cookie from my lunch and it says “You will have full contentment by summers end.” So achieving full contentment is definitely something to be excited about.

(Although there should really be an apostrophe before the “s” in “summers.”)

After a circulation of about 549 e-mails were sent among the writers and editors trying to find a day and time that we could all have lunch together, we went ahead and made a reservation for 12 people at the Dunn Inn for Monday at 12:15. “And good thing we did,” I thought as we entered the restaurant that was completely devoid of afternoon customers except for the 12 of us.

The Dunn Inn turned out to be a very friendly place. When our food came out, the waiter sang out our orders as he placed them in front of us. I ordered a salad along with a few others, and everyone else’s food came out before ours. “The salads will be out soon, we’re just waiting on a cucumber!” the waiter said to us. (Sang to us, rather). About a minute later a cook emerged from the back and scurried through the restaurant and out the front door.  About ten seconds later, he returned—a cucumber in hand. (How this cucumber managed to materialize in so short a time span, the world may never know). When my salad came out it was enormous, and I made the obligatory remarks: “This is so big! I’ll never finish! It’s bigger than my head!” But of course I downed it in minutes flat, as I always do. It happened to be the birthday of one of our writer/editors, so we all sang Happy Birthday to her. When we finished, the cucumber cook from the kitchen ran out to us, grinning. “It’s my birthday, too!’ he exclaimed and we all started applauding.

Also this week we hosted our first ever intern fair for new interns for the summer and fall, and I got to talk to the aspiring writers/editors who will one day replace me. *tear*
The internship fair was a big success with an impressive turnout, but if we had to do it all over again I would suggest that we not serve cupcakes. They are awkward to eat in front of people you are trying to impress.

I wasn’t even particularly trying to impress anyone, and yet I became so self-conscious sloppily eating my cupcake with the thick layer of chocolate frosting that I momentarily considered hiding out in the bathroom to finish eating it, but then I remembered the scene from Mean Girls where Lindsay Lohan has to eat her lunch alone in the bathroom because she has no friends, and I decided to try not to be that pathetic. (Instead I regretfully threw away my half-eaten cupcake).

Working at the Office of Creative Services has definitely been a learning experience. I had to stretch to think of eight new and creative ways to describe lists of honors and awards for the Founder’s Day Teaching Awards book; write my first blog ever; and be more e-mail-savvy than I’ve ever been before (is ending with “sincerely” too outdated?). But I think the hardest, and best, thing I’m learning here is how to manage my time.

My time management skills have always been nonexistent. My excuse is that I “work best under pressure,” but in reality, I can’t work on papers or projects until the last minute because I have so many other things I’ve procrastinated on that need to be taken care of. Despite my terrible habit, my work has always been finished and I’ve earned good grades.

Working at OCS is forcing me to learn and practice time management skills. Everything we do at OCS has to be tracked on this program called the Infowit Job Tracking System. Editing proofs, writing profiles, and writing blogs—all are tracked and billed to clients or recorded as overhead through this software. The ability to see who is paying me for each hour of my time has been a nice incentive to stay on task.

If only our professors would track our work and pay us accordingly, I know I would be a more dedicated student. I can see the project names in Infowit now: “IUB Psychology 101, Read pages 72-120”—or “IUB SOJ 917 Communication Law Review, Write/Edit.” My apartment might even get cleaned once in a while if I could bill someone for my time.

But even though I’m not getting paid, I am trying to apply the concept of job tracking to my schoolwork. Lately, I’ve tried breaking projects down into a few hours every night. For an annotated bibliography that was due two weeks ago, I allocated three hours each night to work on it. However, change is coming slowly: the three hours were 11 p.m. to 2 a.m.—after I took a nap, ate dinner, and caught up with Facebook and Perez Hilton.

A holiday weekend would have been the best time to apply this new method, but I didn’t take advantage of it. Hunting for Easter eggs with my 4-year-old brother trumped research papers and I didn’t get anything done. Consequently, I was at the library until at least 6 a.m. Monday and Tuesday. But like I said, I do my best work under pressure.