Science, Maths and History

Added by popular demand - ze cartoon. :P















My company publishes books for kids in collaboration with the Ministry of Education. Now a book for a specific subject is edited in a certain way. For each subject, you liaise with a different curriculum specialist in the Ministry. There are syllabuses, strict rules that you have to learn and follow, and certain styles you have to familiarise yourself with. Even author idiosyncrasies can be vastly different. Even though we studied the same subjects in school, when it comes to conceptualising, writing and editing a book on it, it's not easy. It takes time to get used to editing books on a particular subject. Which is why for an editor, the switch from one subject to another is often not an easy one.

I'd been working on science books and a science magazine in my company for almost four years now. Recently, I took on the lead of a new department that is supposed to publish books for all subjects. When my publishing manager presented the proposal to me, I accepted it immediately. It was a great challenge for me and a timely career move too. I was very excited. However, when I realised that the first batch of the books under me include 40 maths titles, I tried not to freak out but to take it as a challenge.

So over the last few weeks, I have been studying the syllabus, the history and other details about each project. But somehow, I felt inadequate. Worse, I have two brand new editors under me whom I have to train from scratch. I have trained tons of editors for science, but maths just didn't seem to be my cup of tea. I felt like I needed some training myself before I trained the editors under me.

Then I heard that one of my colleagues R was holding a maths content editing training session for the newbies this week. I jumped at the chance and signed up. Now R is the ultimate guru of primary maths in my company with years and years of experience. The two of us are amongst the 'company dinosaurs' - people who stay on beyond the average 2-year shelf life of an editor working with curriculum publishing.

When R saw my name in the list, she gave me a call, "Sayesha, Why on EARTH have YOU signed up for this?" So I told her why I really needed it.

The session was going great, and she had some really funny slides with editing boo-boos, that were a source of much laughter in the training room. Suddenly something familiar popped up on her slide. It was a rough sketch of some silly cartoon, drawn just below a question. I was trying to figure out where I had seen it before when R announced, "Oh by the way, the copyright of this cartoon belongs to Sayesha."

OHHHHH!!!

Of course!

I'd drawn that cartoon! At least three years ago!

And suddenly it all came back to me.

Flashback - 2003

R - "Sayesha, I need a second opinion on this maths question my author wrote. Read this and tell me what your interpretation is."

We often show each other our work to avoid ambiguity and get a fresh pair of eyes to look at the questions to see if they make sense. Since our target audience comprises mainly kids, the questions can't afford to be confusing in any way. They have to be crystal clear to the point of sometimes being moronically obvious.

So I read the question and burst out laughing.

I forgot the exact words but the question went something like this:

Rafael has a fish tank that measures 40 cm x 20 cm x 20 cm. Through evaporation he loses 1 cm in height each week. How much water each week does he need to add to refill the tank?

R (watches me laugh) - "Aha! I knew it."

Me - "Well, let me sketch out what my interpretation is."

So I drew a cartoon of a boy standing under the sun. His hands and legs (and even his hair) were evaporating. The sun was over his head, laughing devilishly.

We had a good laugh over it, the question was rephrased and the incident forgotten. We have a lot of such incidents happening in the office for us to remember them. Some time ago, I had two instances that I still remember. In the first, which I refer to as the 'bald moon' incident, one of my editors received proofs with the words 'The moon has no hair.' instead of 'The moon has no air.' In the second incident, also known as the 'roast beef' incident, the sentence 'Methane is also produced when cows burp.' had magically transformed into 'Methane is also produced when cows burn'.

We can't do without such fun things happening every now and then. In fact, these incidents keep us editors alive and laughing. But then we have too many of these happening for us to remember all of them.

Back to the present.

So when R announced to the trainees that I had drawn that cartoon, I was totally taken aback. I could not believe that she had preserved the silly cartoon from years ago and had been using it in her training sessions all this years. I couldn't wipe the smile off my face for the rest of the session.

In fact, I was so touched, I was thinking about it in the bus and smiling. I know it's a very silly thing to be so happy over, but I can't help it.

Sometimes, someone brings back a little piece of your own past that you yourself had forgotten, and totally makes your day.