Word: dubs
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...Working as a Let's Go r-dub can be a dream come true, providing a free ticket to a far away land for a seven week trip with a daily stipend to boot. And a summer writing gig for Let's Go can be an attractive bullet on any Harvard resume. Let's Go requires its writers to front the money for their tickets, however, since r-dubs have been known to bail. "Every year there are people who don't follow through on their eight weeks of research," Stone says...
...While I was doing it, it was kind of lonely and a little bit miserable," confesses Maya Sen '00, a Mexico r-dub, who says she ultimately enjoyed her Let's Go experience. "It's fun to be on the road, but when you go back to your hotel room, and you're faced with four hours of writing, and you can't call your family because it's too expensive and your editor hasn't called in a while, it can get pretty hard...
...Lucky r-dubs can use laptop computers and e-mail their handiwork back home. The rest have to dust off skills abandoned since elementary school and put actual pen to actual paper. Not just any words will do for the slave drivers in the home office. Let's Go witticisms are a must for any r-dub. If the r-dub can't produce, editors step in. The result is that special smart-assed Harvard prose only John Updike's mother could love...
...Writing the stuff was hard," says Mexico r-dub Ellen H. Schneider '01. "It took a long time. There were a lot of things that were hassles. I usually stayed in my hotel room sitting on this crappy mattress. There were some places I didn't really like, and I had to make them not sound totally awful in the book...
...Also known as "grunt work," this part of the job exposes just how hard traveling can be. R-dubs' shit work entails confirming restaurant hours, hotel prices and a countless number of tedious details required to maintain the series' credibility. "It's your hardest work," said Greece r-dub Mike Seid. "The majority of your job is fact-checking. I got a little tired of it towards the end. You occasionally think that these things are meaningless...