55 Is the New 55

After 25 years of practicing law, I decided it was time for a career change. Unfortunately, I didn't have a legal thriller plotted on a bulletin board or a romance novel on a shelf in my closet like some of my peers. What I did have was the experience accumulated over years of editing for friends and family who have trusted me with their work.

I had become the designated “editor” for family, friends, family friends, and friends’ families without any specific training in copyediting. I decided, if I wanted to make editing a career, I needed some formal education. YouTube does not qualify, contrary to what my kids think. I found an introductory copyediting and publishing course in the English Department of the University of Cincinnati. Much more my style. This post began as an assignment for that course, which was taught entirely online due to the pandemic. I have to admit that was a draw.

I was the oldest person taking—or teaching—the course, by a lot. The rest of the students were my son's age. He was, at the time, taking his senior year college courses in my basement, also due to the pandemic. I hoped my attendance onscreen rather than in person would minimize the age difference. I couldn’t bring myself to switch off my camera, which just seemed rude, but I did sit with my back to my office windows so that I appeared almost entirely in silhouette. Do you think they were fooled?

The assignment came about two months into the course and required us to search for jobs and internships in copyediting and publishing and to create a narrative based on that search. We were required to search at least two sources including Handshake, UC’s job and internship database.

I found Handshake was geared to the “traditional” undergraduate students in my class. I would have appreciated Handshake when I was a traditional undergraduate playing with MacPaint on my boyfriend's Apple Macintosh. It was 1984. However, Handshake posed a few challenges for me at this stage in my life. I nailed the name and address, but things went off track at “Education Level.” Undergraduate majors had changed with the times at my university, but I came as close as I could. Next, there was no box for “J.D.” I felt uncomfortable checking “Doctorate,” but “Masters” didn't seem quite right either. I Googled the topic and spent the next hour reading about the debate over whether one with a “J.D.” could/should call oneself “doctor.” This left me well-prepared to defend Dr. Jill Biden, EdD, for having the nerve to use the title she had earned. I ended up selecting “Technical Diploma.” It didn't seem quite right, but I needed to move on to "Experience."

Unfortunately, there was no box to check for raising children, not even under “Volunteer.” Raising children has been at least as taxing as serving on a library board or organizing pancake breakfasts, both of which I recorded. I entered my legal experience at a law firm and as an independent contractor so, of course, the jobs suggested for me were all law-related, but not lawyer. I'm guessing that was due to the “Technical Diploma."

For the second site, I chose Penguin Random House’s website. The “Careers” page was disheartening, to say the least, featuring a fresh-faced young woman beginning her publishing career. I’ll leave pretending to be a twenty-something in order to get an entry-level job in publishing in New York City to Sutton Foster. I couldn’t pull it off anyway.

The position of “Editorial Assistant” looked fabulous, a wonderful place for that young woman to start her career in publishing. However, at a salary of $40,000 per year, I’m not sure how she afforded life in New York City. I found an article on Madeline McIntosh, the U.S. chief executive of Random Penguin House, that provided some background on her entry into publishing. “The daughter of an arts administrator and a banker, she grew up in St. Paul, Minn., and Pittsburgh, and studied fine arts at Harvard, hoping at first to become a curator. She took the Radcliffe Publishing Course instead, leading to a toehold in the industry as a temporary assistant to an editor at HarperCollins, then to a permanent position at Norton.” I overcame my feeling of inadequacy with a giant slice of birthday cake and got to work on this website.