Sarah's Playing Music and I Am Tired, Blah Blah Blah

Every time I go to inscape I feel pain. It's the pain that results from when you can't get any work done at all. Why? The computers don't work. Again. And people have wondered why I haven't gotten any work done in the last three weeks. They probably think I'm the biggest slacker on staff. If only I could get InDesign to open...

And no. I hate Quark. Sorry.

I wrote a huge note and put it on Mel's door and asked him to look into the problem. Translated, my nice, green error notification really means "FIX INDESIGN! Please. :)"

Anyway, I went back upstairs and was happily listening to editorgirl chat with the zillions of students who suddenly dropped from the sky and packed the PUB's main room looking for inscape credit. (And eg, James passed by and he actually remembered my name this time!)

All of the sudden I heard my name. "Erin, where are you?" Unknown to me, eg had signed me up to help interested individuals learn about design. Gee, thanks. I went downstairs and immediately freaked out. I can't teach people anything! Hmm. What to do.

After milling around for awhile and trying to get a publishing program to open on a computer, I decided to chill out and pretend like I knew what I was doing. (The difference between eg and me is that eg is very good at pretending like she knows what she is doing when she really doesn't.) But hey, I surprised myself. Two cute little sophomores showed up in the office downstairs, eager to learn about design but having no previous experience whatsoever. Oh the thrill of a challenge. We had a nice little discussion about design--I asked them a bunch of questions and they just stared at me with blank expressions. Ok, I guess we'll start at the beginning... do you know what a template is? Folio? Serif and sans-serif fonts? Double-page spread? Have you learned about proximity and alignment in CHum 283 yet? Yes, no, yes, maybe, just learning it.

Alrightee then.

The best part was that I really do think they believe I know what I'm doing. That works for me. I can live with that idea until next week when I see them again.

Turns out that I'll probably only really use those darling students for proofing and maybe flowing text into layouts once we decide what submissions we'll actually be using. It's too hard to teach people how to create templates from scratch. But I don't mind teaching them design concepts. And I know I can do it--when I'm good at something, I'm good at it. Sometimes I just don't have the confidence.

Right now I am confident that I won't be leaving campus any time soon and that I am hungry...