Annushka Sonek

I edit storyboards and edit and generate promotional materials, medical texts, and correspondence for a leading specialist for visual storytelling in health care and the life sciences. CAST PHARMA produces animated films, presentations/slide decks, still images, interactive training tools, and applications for conference booths to explain the mode of action, mechanism of disease, and study results of pharmaceutical and biotech products as well as the function and use of medical devices.

I teach general and business English at all levels, including one-on-one lessons and variously sized groups, long-running classes as well as intensives. I organize lesson plans, create personalized teaching material, mark homework, and administer tests. The job requires a wide variety of skills, from the ability to entertain to specific grammar knowledge to the willingness to improvise in unexpected situations, adjusting materials and techniques for each unique class.

Responsibilities included copy-editing manuscripts for grammar, spelling, and style (sometimes with rewriting), handling the enquiries and concerns of authors, customers, and visitors through the telephone and written correspondence, archiving correspondence and other data, general office tasks such as filing and photocopying, assessing and presenting to the company potential publications, drawing maps and diagrams, altering and redrawing illustrations for copyright purposes, and designing custom fonts.

I greeted visitors and fielded all general enquiries; I was also called upon for specific projects such as the organization of travel itineraries for my superiors and events such as meetings and conferences. Other responsibilities included archiving correspondence and other data, planning menus and ordering and preparing catering for events, and overseeing the function of office equipment.

I greeted clients and visitors, dealt with queries and concerns, arranged appointments both in person and over the telephone, organized client files, and kept track of psychiatrists’ and other staff members’ schedules. The job sometimes involved tense situations in which emergency medical services or the police were required; at other times, aggressive or uncontrolled clients had to be delicately handled without outside assistance.

(Fourth year completed on an exchange program with Glasgow University, University Avenue, Glasgow G12 8QQ, Scotland)