Greetings dear ones,
As many of you know, I work as a Spanish interpreter at a hospital. While I love facilitating communication between patients and their providers and helping underserved communities access healthcare, the work is becoming increasingly difficult for me as I age and face physical limitations. I spend a good part of my workday traversing the hospital on foot and standing for long periods to interpret in crowded rooms. The work is often rushed and stressful, especially in emergencies and other critical situations. By the end of the day, I am exhausted, and my whole body aches. My commute takes an hour and a half, and winter road conditions are often treacherous and nerve-racking.
My struggles with work are also financial. Interpreting is an undervalued profession, with a cap on earnings that limits my ability to meet the basic needs of my family, let alone save for the future.
To preserve my health—both mental and physical—and increase my financial security, I've been working for some time to transition into a remote career in which I could continue to utilize my skills with language and the written word. I've tried my hand at document translation, and have been discouraged by a global competition that has driven translation costs to unprecedented lows. I took an interest in the vendor side of translation, thinking I might work in localization management or engineering. However, the highly technical aspects of this field are not for the wordsmith in me.
Several months ago, I came to a reckoning that I still needed to pursue a viable career in a field that gave me joy. And I concluded that there was nothing more fulfilling to me than writing and helping other writers express their ideas succinctly and elegantly. I have always been a grammar nerd, and I experience a curious delight in helping my friends and peers edit their academic papers, cover letters, and the like. However, although I have a master's degree in a writing-intensive field (literary translation), I lack formal training as an editor. Thus, despite my analogous lack of funds, I decided to pursue a professional certificate in copyediting through UC San Diego Extended Studies. I was able to scrape the resources together to pay for the first course in the program, Grammar Lab, which I am pleased to be just finishing with high marks. But to pay for the remainder of the certificate, or at least the next course (Copyediting I), I need some help. The greatest holiday gift I could imagine would be a donation, however modest, toward this investment in the stability and job satisfaction I seek as an aging parent and a creative soul.
The certificate program consists of four classes, each costing $625. Unfortunately, no financial aid is available through the university. My current goal is to cover the fees for Copyediting I; if your donations happen to exceed the cost of this class, I will apply any remaining funds to future classes. I may need to fundraise for the whole program, but I'll cross that bridge when I get there.
I thank you from the bottom of my heart for considering helping me with this educational goal. I can't wait to become the best editor I can be with your support!
With gratitude,
Sauvryn
