Vanity leads to Insanity

Take it from me, children. Vanity leads to insanity. Not that insanity is necessarily a bad thing, but there are better things in the world. World peace, for example. Or a cranberry chicken salad.

In any case, few weeks back, I received an email from an esteemed professor of an esteemed university in Vienna. He is putting together a book on citizenship policies, and the draft on Slovakia was done by an ex-classmate of mine. It reeked to high heavens. Can I edit/ re-write it?

"Ooooh, how jolly!", my inner ego, or Id (whichever of the buggers has these subjects in its job description) clapped its hands. They turn to ME, of all people! I am tickled pink. I squirm in the chair for a few seconds (cannot reply immediately, that is sooo below me), and then type hastily:
"I will be glad to re-write the chapter, it seems to be right up my alley" (read: I have not the first clue about the subject, don't even know where to begin looking...)

So I got myself into this mess. I have not read the draft before I blurted out my overjoyed agreement to be the co-author. I had to pack up my entire apartment next week and move, if only across the street (that would be a topic for a separate post). I had a newsletter to put together, edit, and mail out for work. No matter. I'm a superwoman, I can do everything. Right.

The moving took up, as it does, way more time than one plans. Deadline came and went, and I was still hauling boxes of books, Aztec statuettes, spices and single socks (you never know when the twin sock re-appears!) from the apartment on 54 to the one on 59. On Sunday I finally sat down to what I thought would be a day, maximum two, of editing. It became painfully obvious to me within an hour that I should have read - and declined- the job before I responded. The English was so horrendous I couldn't understand it even in Slovak syntax, considering all possible words and idioms that the author could have had in mind. Rest was a mumble-jumble of legal quotes (quoted in a wrong format). Then came this 'analysis' that made my eyes bulge out of my skull. Even the notorious nationalist Slota, who peed drunk out of a restaurant balcony not too far from my home in Bratislava, could not trump it.

Needless to say, editing was a Sisyphos' battle. I trudged through it for hours and hours, not sleeping on Sunday, sleeping only 2 hours on Monday....with still more to go. Hastily, I was adding sources so that the analysis has a head and a heel, as we clever Slovaks say. One of the sources that I found made my heart stop. It sounded so familiar, where have I come across it.... With suspicion I scroll through the chapter draft.... there it is. Translated word to word...no attribution. Holy smokes. I wonder where other "analyses" in the draft come from. I google a few sentences here and there.... all lifted, plagiarized, swiped, scrounged, pilfered, filched, mooched, cribbed, dipped...well, stolen (uh, sorry, got a little carried away with my WDICT32 Translator program here). It is Tuesday, my brain is fried, as are my eyes. At this point I am attacking the text randomly, ploughing through it to add sources, change wording, cite what can be cited. And ignoring calls and emails from work and home. Everybody's pissed off at me at this point. And I'm pissed off at me, the chapter sucks, as do I. Bitter, furious at the original author for her audacity to plagiarize worse than my freshmen, and at self for vanity and idiocy, tired to the point of having twitches and spasms in random parts of my body, where I didn't even know I had muscles, I finally send the sucker to the editor on Wednesday night (well, Thursday morning, to be frank), being able to read it over once, barely. I fall asleep, out in a coma. I sleep right through an important work meeting (standing the poor woman up in a coffee shop), and a few more phone calls. One colleague of mine is now convinced I dislike her and don't want to work with her any more. My mother believes she insulted me in some way and is now inquiring what has she done to deserve the dead silence from me. Editor writes back that he is 'generally happy' with the chapter, but has many comments and 'suggestions'. I will never catch up on emails. My reputation will be forever tarnished with this ogre of a chapter. They would probably fire me, if they could. All I can say, just as that raven did (well, him, and the international society after the Holocaust) is :"Never more!"
So, I picked myself up and dragged myself to The Ring. I took a free trial boxing session with a personal trainer, and all of my troubles floated away. Or were punched into the heavy bag. And the trainer....so handsome, so well sculpted, so funny, so....divine. Back to boxing. That is the world for Dasha. None of this academic crap. I'll leave that to the birds!