I Am My Sister's Editor, Again

So last month I blog posted to you guys last month about my sister deputizing me as her editor for a paper she's been working on for school.  Well, she has gotten feedback from her professor, and it's apparently back to the drawing board, because she asked me Thursday night to look over her latest draft.  And she has notes too, from her prof.

I understand my sis' anxiety in getting this paper right.  But as I was kind of freaking out before about how my edits and suggestions could fuck up her paper, I am in even more of a tizzy now.  This goes beyond grammatical and syntactical edits because I think my sister doesn't want me to focus on that.  Instead, she now wants me to step back and see the forest instead of the trees.  In particular, she wants me to look at things like organization and sense -- how the information flows from one paragraph and thought and topic to the next, and whether she says what she means to say, and if she backs up the conclusions with evidence.  That was a main emphasis her professor gave her.  She gave my sister a link, and in turn she gave it to me, and I swear I had never heard of this notion of "signposting" before, but that is a thing I need to apply to her paper now.  It's basically using connecting words to develop your thesis -- you know, "first," "then," "finally," also known as the things you learn in elementary school.  Yeah, my sister's prof told her to tell me to help her with that.

I am somewhat exasperated by that, for competing reasons.  On the one hand, I find the use of connecting words so basic that I have no idea why this concept has to be reintroduced in a grad-level paper.  I am kind of wincing that this "signposting" recommends using "I" a lot, for instance, and I was not trained to use the first person in a scholarly paper.  On the other hand, I am scared that if I hunt and pick for opportunities to put in more connecting words and statements of what my sister is about to say in the next paragraph to make sure the reader knows exactly where she's going with her paper, I am going to totally screw it up.  This may be basic, but "signposting" is so foreign to me that it could be beyond my grasp of comprehension.  And my sister is employing my help to signpost.

Plus I'm in a bit of a time crunch.  She wants edits and recommendations back today ... which is the day I said I could give her paper back to her.  I am tired of seeing her paper now, but I'm not finished with my first pass.  And I need to sleep because I'm helping out with the Vikings broadcast today and tomorrow.  I hope to have enough downtime today to keep my promise and give my sis my notes, but I am far from done.  I hope to pass through with edits, send her paper back to her, and then e-mail her my comments on organization and transitions.  It's the best I can do, but I don't know if I'll have the time to do it, and I don't know if it's good enough.

I shouldn't feel overwhelmed.  But I do.