What I did this year:

[tanaise]

Over the course of the last year I have worked in a number of ongoing projects-Quarterly, NELS, QC for CDT. I have also acted as a pinch hitter for other projects that need short-term temporary help. Most of my work took place in a group of projects-RA/editor/layout help for a project involving a lot of direct interaction with a client (Bill Fowler, NCES). I also continued working on a project from last year, the NELS transcript study, which wound up in the first quarter of 2002. While previous work with this project had been predominantly straight data entry (transcription of the transcripts), the majority of the work I did in 2002 was helping the client clean up and finalize the data for others to analyze. Because of the uneven supply of CDT work, and the need to cover others with a narrower range of skills, I was often forced to find non-CDT work from ESSI at large. Luckily, because I can do just about anything, it's usually possible for me to pick up enough short term work to carry me till CDT starts getting in enough work to cover me. I also enjoy the range of skills this requires me to maintain, and the knowledge that because I have proven myself adept at everything I've been asked to do, project leaders feel secure in giving me work even when it's not something I've helped with before.
Thanks to the wide range of projects I've helped on, I have seen many papers in multiple stages from their original layout through to their inclusion in the NCES Quarterly. I have helped with the layout of papers, proofed them, attended Divisional or other reviews for them as part of my AD Pre-Pub work, seen them in print, and then helped lay them out for the Quarterly. While working with NELS, I've had the responsibility of finalizing layout for a number of books and papers for print and then PDFing the final version for web release. While this drew on pre-existing skills, the continued practice has been beneficial to developing tricks and procedures to cut down on the amount of time it takes me to return to corrected copies to the client. Several projects have also given me editorial type work-from proofing reports that have previously gone through a level of tech review to copy editing. Overall, I've been given more editorial work this year than my previous years, which I am very pleased with. While I'm still a novice at it, I've copy-edited the scopes of work for the ESSI Workplan for the past three years. Because the NCES Quarterly was understaffed and suffering because of that this year, I was asked to help with the editing stages of that project, not just the layout that I've been doing for two years now. The Condition of Education also was understaffed at times this year, so I was asked to help with the entry of reviewer comments, which includes a level of editorial skill along with the handwriting translation to make sure that you're reading them correctly and that the comments actually say make sense in the context of the reviewed material.
This year more than any of the previous, I've had more face-to-face interaction with the client. While I have a local contact for NELS, I get a lot of my work directly from the client, or am expected to interact with them once I'm assigned the task. With both the transcript project and most of my time working with Bill Fowler, the client would communicate directly with me, with no ESSI contact person as an intermediary. The AD pre-pub work I did also involved direct interaction with the client as I'd have to notify them of the review date and distribute review copies, as well as the review meeting itself. At all times I have felt comfortable in my ability to interact in an appropriate manner with the client, something that I've grown into over the past year and a half or so.
Less than 50 percent of my work was done on three projects-NELS, the NCES quarterly, and various projects that fall under the Condition of Education umbrella. I had 31 projects that I worked on less than two weeks, some for as little as a half hour or less of time. Most of the smaller projects were Quality Control work for the CDT team. Overall, Proofing/Quality Control accounted for more than 15% of my work this year. All project work that we get given usually gets passed across my desk at least once for QC. I check to be sure all text has been included, that the corrections marked were made, and that no additional errors have been introduced. This QC ensures that we look better to the client, and we cut down on the number of rounds of corrections necessary. I catch enough errors that it remains cost effective to have me review all our products, and we continue to turn out the highest quality products we can. Because I have been QC for over a year now, I know what mistakes the individual designers commonly make, and am more likely to catch them than when they QC each other.
I layout and make edits to projects that come to me through the CDT as well as one that come to me through NELS. While I am the most skilled team member at Word, I also have experience in PageMaker layout, and am often given the overflow work from other team members when they need to adjust their workloads. I'm still better at layout in Word, due to having more experience with it, but I'm getting better with PageMaker as my familiarity of the program is increasing. Most of my experience with layout comes as working on the NCES Quarterly as a substitute for the usual designer, but particularly after my work with the PageMaker tables in the Hispanic report, I've been given more and more difficult work in PageMaker. I also am often asked to make changes to documents when the layout was performed by other designers, or in Word documents I previously worked with. As with other areas of my work, I find that the increased practice has increased my speed without negatively effecting my speed. Several projects asked for my help with PDFs, so I've developed my skills there to the point that I'm often asked to troubleshoot other people's problems with files.
One thing I noticed myself doing a lot more of this year was trusting my abilities, even where they hadn't been tested before. I was given a lot of work that I wasn't necessarily completely sure how to handle, and a lot less supervision than I'd been accustomed to, but I did it, and did it correctly. I have more faith in other people's judgments of my abilities these days, and more faith in my own ability to pick up skills on the fly. I still have problems accurately gauging how long it will take me to complete projects, but as I tend to overestimate how long it will take me to do stuff, it isn't something I worry much about.

Comments

[cissa.livejournal.com]

VERY impressive!!!! :)

What's it for?

[tanaise.livejournal.com]

Annual review. I had to give them a summary of my accomplishments. No one actually reads them. So I went crazy with it. :) They didn't give me a promotion last year, and incase they don't want to give me one this year, I wanted to be able to prove how much I rock.

[cissa.livejournal.com]

You did a great job! I hope they're appropriately impressed and lavish raises and promotions upon you!