Deadline: Dr. Adams--Antarctic Explorer

Allow me to introduce the first segment of my blog: Deadline. Any post I write that has "Deadline" in the title contains news and stories about my current job. In today's case, this post combines my student secretary job with my senior editor job.

As I mentioned before, I’m working on a travel magazine called Stowaway. It’s produced start-to-finish by a small team of BYU students (including Yours Truly) as part of an editing capstone class. We’re writing the articles, editing the articles, designing the pages, selling ad space, spreading the word via social media, putting together the web content, and printing the whole thing ourselves. It’s a daunting task, but the results are amazing. You should check it out. stowawaymag.com. And I’m not just saying that because I’m trying to promote it--it’s a legitimately good magazine, and years of past issues are free to view online in their entirety. I know I’ll definitely be following the magazine’s progress even after I graduate.

Just hanging by my fingernails over the ocean.  No big deal.

Anyways, the two articles I’m writing for the magazine are due on February 4th, so this weekend I’m scrambling to get everything put together. I’ve been emailing and calling all week trying to get quotes and insights from random people, with varying success. It should come together nicely, for which I’m grateful. It was a gamble choosing the topics I did. I was especially nervous about the article I’m doing for the Profile section. There’s a professor in the Bio Department named Dr. Adams who goes to Antarctica every year doing research on nematodes. I decided to make him the subject of my article, but it required me to just send him an email and pray that he would get back to me in time to write up the article. I held my breath all this last week, hoping his Antarctic internet connection would be working. I had nightmares about his helicopter going down, leaving him stranded and freezing and unable to get back to me. What was I supposed to do then??

But my prayers were answered and Dr. Adams emailed me back yesterday with the best response I could have hoped for. I knew he was a cool guy, but I didn’t expect him to be a great writer as well. He pretty much did my job for me by answering my questions in the most-detailed, funniest way possible. Here, look at this. Just look at this:

This is Dr. Adams, chillin' in Antarctica with his penguin peeps.

Question: How do you get to Antarctica, and what's the trip like?

 I fly via commercial airline from SLC to LAX, then on to either Auckland or Sydney, and then to Christchurch, New Zealand. We usually spend a day or so in Christchurch gearing up (we store our cold-weather clothes and stuff in a big warehouse in Christchurch). Then, the US Air Force flies us from Christchurch to McMurdo Station, Antarctica, in a big cargo plane (usually an LC-130 or a C-17). Depending on the winds and type of aircraft we take, that trip usually takes between 5 1/2 to as much as 9 hours (As I'm typing this, I'm on the 9-hour, high-winds version right now, an LC-130 with skis for landing on soft ice and snow). Flying in military aircraft can be really different from commercial airlines. The seats are made out of nylon webbing, and you typically sit in rows facing each other such that the person sitting across from you has their knee in your crotch the whole time. It can be a tight squeeze. If you don't have a knee in your crotch the whole way, it probably means the center of the plane is filled with cargo, which can be anything from a giant pallet of beer to a helicopter. There's no in-flight service, and no windows to look out of really, and it's usually either really cold or really hot in the cabin. But none of this bothers us--we're either going to Antarctica (!) or we're going home after being gone for a long time (woot!).

That's just a snippet, from one question I expected maybe a two-sentence response to. I’m sad that my limit is 900 words, because he sent me seven whole pages of content. It’s a gold mine of great article material. I can’t wait to put it all together and see it published as a spread in the magazine. Not only am I glad that my deadline no longer looks so daunting, I’m glad that I get to give this awesome professor a voice. Stowaway is read online by people in over 160 countries.

This is why I love editing. Everyone has a voice. Dr. Adams’ voice just so happens to already be exceptionally well-written, but for those who don’t feel as confident with their words, that’s why I’m here! I get your voice heard by making sure words flow well and are concise and will connect to an audience. I love helping people get their stories out.

Plus I get to read first-hand accounts of Antarctic exploration before they’re ever published. Score!

ANTARCTICA!! 

Keep an eye out for the finished product. It should be available in April, which gives you plenty of time to check out stowawaymag.com and read up on past issues.