Karen Andrea Gallegos Ceballos

I acquired solid foundations for research, writing and critical thinking during my undergraduate education in Philosophy. There I had a chance to develop writing and grammatical skills thanks to frequent essays and presentations that I had to prepare. Additionally, I took several courses in literature and creative writing, which helped me to enhance the clarity and speed of my writing. Moreover, as a member of the Aesthetics research group, devoted to the study of Konrad Paul Liesmann’s work, I supervised the final draft of the Spanish translation of his book Das Universum der Dinge: Zur Ästhetik de Alltäglichen. Consequently, I pay the utmost attention to detail and have a natural disposition against repetitive and inauthentic writing.

During my masters in Budapest, the standards for research and writing were rigorous and formal aspects of my written work were scrutinized as much as its content. I also received extensive Latin to English translation training. My thesis is about interpretation and appropriation of the medieval Latin poetry by Remy de Gourmont, often demanded that I translate the original French text into English. Since I have to meet tight deadlines and sometimes work by my own, I make frequent use of translation and workflow software to improve quality and efficiency.

My interest in proofreading began when I started an online magazine with a university colleague. Our blog was a digest of entangled philosophical theories and aimed to present them to adolescents in a clear and coherent way. I oversaw all aspects of the content creation, starting from the first draft to the final post. This paved the way to my internship at Libros Pimienta, a publishing house specialized in children’s and young adult literature. As an intern I was involved in the entirety of the editing and promotional process; including the selection of the texts included in the book Motivos de sobra para inquietarse, the proofreading of manuscripts, sending feedback to the authors, picking up the final print, creating content for the social media campaign and engaging actively with the online community. 

My previous job position as an assistant teacher, besides reinforcing the teachings of the head teacher, include several administrative tasks that I can extrapolate to other roles. For instance, plan according to an academic calendar and keep updated the team calendar. Similarly, I must keep an effective communication with other teachers across the kindergarten mainly to coordinate the academic curriculum. In like manner, an important part of my job, is to prepare progress reports sent to the parents to inform them on the child’s development.