I thought quark was something a duck said...

Within the past six months I have taken a position at a print production company.   As a recent grad with dreams of entering the work force and having my own office with a desk, computer, and fantastic office supplies to play with( I have an unhealthy obsession with Staples products)and  I took this position that barely had a computer, much less fancy paper clips.  It's a production fulfillment position, which involves packing boxes, essentially.   In short, it didn't provide me with much fulfillment. 

Now that the fall rush season has passed I've begun shadowing one of my coworkers to become familiar with the Mac operating system as well as the design programs we use frequently.  Throughout my whole life I've only used PCs, with the exception of that one class I took in college which I used a Mac, which was a while ago.  So let's just say I was not very familiar with anything other than the iTunes program with Macs and even that was a bit shaky.

While I've learned some very important and useful things, for example Command A selects all and that takes three seconds off of my life when I need to select, well, all, I also have learned that designers speak an entirely different language than the rest of us.  My boss for example said this to me the other day:  "So, when you select the correct imposition you need to click register so the file can be rastored.  The restoring process..."  I can't even fully tell you what he said because that's when I tuned out.

It's pretty funny though, because between the proofers talking about the funny images and mistakes they see in the circulars we create and the designers talking about vectors and "indesigning," it's like an entirely different language there.  One that I am completely unaware of.  But I do as I do in all situations where I am completely out of my habitat: make jokes.  Like this one:

Tom:  I always get mixed up between which Quark to use.

Steph:  Well, we'll all be changing over to the new one.  I remember when there was only Quark 7.0.

Me: (After an awkward moment or two)  I remember when I thought quark was something a duck said.