 My name is Carrie Thurber and I'm an Academic Editor, Operations Specialist at Research Square Company. My focus is on instructional design for our e-learning courses for on-the-job training. Although I started as a quality control editor five years ago, I quickly fell in love with our training program. I've worked with our training teams several years on various projects and initiatives, which led me to my current role overseeing instructional design. My typical day often includes forming an edit in the morning, then attending and facilitating meetings through the early afternoon. I spend a few hours in the evening working on instructional design and our e-learning courses. Some days I may spend more time editing and other days more time designing courses, but I'm at my best when I have a healthy mix of activities across the week. When I started editing, the biggest adjustment for me was balancing speed and quality. I could read papers very fast, but then I'd miss a lot of the edits that the customer was expecting me to make. When I focused on catching every error that I could, I found I was spending way too much time on a single paper, thus delaying my getting my work done for the week. Practice and experience, coupled with a lot of helpful tips from my peers, really helped me to calibrate my editing pace and accuracy. My biggest suggestion to those who are applying for an academic role is to be willing to learn. You're likely coming to this role from some experience editing, but it takes time to learn the ins and outs of what our customers are looking for. Our policies change periodically based on business or customer needs, so you may need to learn a new skill or tool or editing product very quickly. Learning from and incorporating feedback that is provided to you will go a long way in helping you succeed in the editing role.