What's an Editor?

[LibraryLady]

May the deity of your choice bless us. The future of our country is in danger from our College students.

Today, I met a lovely young woman who was researching a picture painted by an American artist. The lady was nicely dressed. She was soft spoken and polite but she was absolutely clueless.

We helped her find the references in our Library catalog. We found the books for her and made the photocopies she said she needed. That's when the problems started to surface.

I asked if she had written down the citations for the books from which she had taken copies. She hadn't and asked what 'citations' were. We explained how to write a reference for a paper and walked her through the entire thing while she wrote her citations on the back of the photocopies.

You Librarians know the drill: Author (surname followed by First names). Title. Place of publication, publisher, year of publication and pages used.

She was happy to write it all down but she had a problem. One of the books she consulted didn't have an author. It had editors and what were editors?

We explained what editors did and my brain wanted to explode after it because she didn't quite get what editors do.

This was a woman in her third year of College and she was going to a school where a person would have to work. She was that far along in her education and didn't know how to make a basic citation? She wasn't even aware that she would have to cite sources she consulted to write her paper.

We gave her what she needed, including a tutorial on end-notes but I'm not sure how much sank in. I don't expect every College student will write to MLA standards but, by the third year, they should know how to write at least a basic paper.

Anybody got any spare cookies they can throw my way?

[wraiths_crono]

*hands cookies over* sorry only got double chocolate chip ones

Yes you just killed my English teacher with that story gah!

[ralerin]

You have GOT be to be joking. Honestly, how did this woman survive to her JUNIOR YEAR and not write a single paper? And she has no idea what an editor is?

*melts into an exasperated puddle while tossing over as many cookies as possible*

[Becks]

I am utterly speechless.

[Broomjockey]

As someone who wants to be an editor, this makes me sad.

[Aramika]

Just.... how does she not know how to do citations? I was doing then back in high school (maybe even middle school, I can't remember). But in college? I'm in college now and if we don't do citations, it's considered to be plagiarized and that has serious consequences- even as bad as being kicked out of college.

[Buglady]

Wow. Just... wow. And here I thought it was bad that one of my instructors booked a library instruction session to teach everyone how to use the databases (we have full access to PsycINFO, Medline, and so on)... but everyone at least knew that they had to cite stuff even if they weren't completely clear on the strict APA format they needed to use.

(APA style is annoying and weird to me - but I cut my teeth on MLA and Chicago style since i started over in Humanities)

[Chanlin]

I'm hoping beyond hope that she some how made it that far in her college career without ever having had a basic composition course and that the research she was doing was for her first basic composition course.

At least if the above is true I can forgive her a small amount because I've encountered similar issues in my composition 1 course. In my composition 2 course most people were competent enough to realize they needed citations but weren't familiar with every format. Mostly MLA was used, but one time our instructor had us use APA just to get a feel for it.

If the above is not true and she somehow still hasn't grasped that concept I want to know how she passed her composition courses to begin with.

[Broomjockey]

If the above is not true and she somehow still hasn't grasped that concept I want to know how she passed her composition courses to begin with.

Well, at the least, to the best of my knowledge, Canadian colleges/universities don't HAVE basic composition courses. We just make English 101 a requirement for everyone, and they cover basic essay writing in there. So through a series of equivalencies, it could conceivably be possible to not take the only course that forces you to write essays. It may be that she's at a similar institution. I'm still more shocked at the complete befuddlement over the term "Editor." You'd think they'd at least be familiar with the concept of a newspaper editor or something.

[Difdi]

I'm in college now and if we don't do citations, it's considered to be plagiarized and that has serious consequences- even as bad as being kicked out of college.

...So...when you do research, they make you start from the ground up, not building on anyone else's work? How's your stone knife crafting skills?

[Buglady]

...So...when you do research, they make you start from the ground up, not building on anyone else's work? How's your stone knife crafting skills?

No, you have to build on others' work, but you have to give appropriate credit for the ideas and facts you use. Citations also allow your work to be placed in context with others' research and allow comparisons if your findings or conclusions are new. If you're in an undergraduate class situation, citations show that you've *done* the research instead of just making it up, or copying off someone else. Anybody can dash off a few pages of bull**** or crib off Wikipedia, but that's not what the instructors are looking for, and it's not teaching you anything useful about finding, evaluating, and then synthesizing information to support your own original ideas.

Hm. I didn't realize I was so passionate about that...

[Xarlaxas]

Hmm, I've only just started at university here in Scotland and I've had to do citations, bibliographies and what-not, though you don't get any classes on how to do such things that you have to take there are workshops held to learn about it and most of the course handbooks explain the preferred method of citation they prefer (Harvard usually).

Though I'm not used to it yet I would like to imagine that by my third year I will know how to do citations.... If this is what third year at college in America is like I'm going to look forward to the exchange.

[Pagan]

Well, at the least, to the best of my knowledge, Canadian colleges/universities don't HAVE basic composition courses. We just make English 101 a requirement for everyone, and they cover basic essay writing in there.

I should have gone ahead and taken English 101 when I was in college. But I didn't because through testing I was able to take Honors English, which you think would be better wouldn't you? Guess again. The whole semester consisted of keeping a journal, reading "Walden", and writing a couple of poems.

This professor earned my undying hatred by
1 - When we turned in our journals, mine came back with a note that it "felt light". That's right, she weighed them. So I got dinged for using one word to say things instead of 10 in my own journal.

2- I had to miss a Monday class and turn in one of the poems late....because my dad had almost died over the weekend. Seriously, he was diagnosed with spinal meningitis on a Saturday night (I think, I've blocked a lot of that weekend) and they didn't know if he was going to live through the night. Got to class on Wednesday and told her what was going on and her response was, "Well, suck it up. Bad things happen." And she wouldn't let me turn in the assignment late. Bitch

I'm still more shocked at the complete befuddlement over the term "Editor." You'd think they'd at least be familiar with the concept of a newspaper editor or something.

Not that I can detect any actual editing going on in newspapers these days. Some of the mistakes I see make me cry. I've often thought of taking articles every now and then, marking the boo-boos with red and sending it to the paper.

[crazylegs]

*melts into an exasperated puddle while tossing over as many cookies as possible*

Do you want to rephrase that a little...?

[Rapscallion]

Not that I can detect any actual editing going on in newspapers these days. Some of the mistakes I see make me cry. I've often thought of taking articles every now and then, marking the boo-boos with red and sending it to the paper.

I'll wait for Mysty's post about that.

Rapscallion