(no subject)

Last Thursday I received my first explicit warning that if I did not improve dramatically in the next four weeks, my training would be discontinued and I would have to seek employment elsewhere. When I've expressed job performance anxiety here before, I have received words along the lines of "Don't worry." But it is precisely my lack of concern that has put me in this predicament. All my problems as a copyeditor trainee stem from impatience with the tasks at hand. I can't afford to be so dismissive. Coming in earlier and cutting back on sugar have been marginally helpful at best.

Fortunately, I remembered an idiosyncratic technique with a good, albeit short, track record for me. If I mentally narrate the text with the voice of edutainment software character Dr. Brain (an eccentric German neurologist and inventor, geared toward ages 12 and up), I linger on the meaning better, especially when it's scientific. That's just like me.

Oh, and I also bother looking in dictionaries now, just to be safe.