At 9:00 AM,
Central Standard Time today, my final paper constituting 10% of my grade for a class
I do so despise was due. As of 7:00 AM I had not written a word of it.
The alarm didn't go off. Fucking alarm set to fucking PM when it should be AM. Everyone needs to switch to military time just for my benefit is one of the first couple thoughts. Rush into the shower, rush out, rush upstairs, downstairs, upstairs, finally have everything, and out the door before my mother can mention, "You're not wearing a shirt."
Yes, I ran out to my car, in January, with a winter coat on and no shirt. I am that incompetent.
At school, major attempts were made to bang up something that might feasibly be called an outline of a paper. Cobbled together some bullshit on the fly, chugged it through the Fancy-Vocab-o-Matic (it discombobulates and synthesizes Julian fries!). By 7:45 AM I had the ghost of a decent final paper. Enough to pass, at least.
Press print once. Press it again. Tap foot and stare at the cruddy computer in one of the random science labs I'd snuck into. Tap foot some more. Save it to a floppy, restart the computer, check to make sure floppy saved properly and rush to another open lab to try that printer. Now here's the thing: this would have been fantastically easier had I merely saved the paper to the network. Click, save, move to any single fucking other computer in the school and all would be well. But we can see from exhibits A, B, C, etc. that I wasn't really riding the whole 'functioning brain' trend this morning.
So I walk down two floors to the physics room. My teacher watches me scramble in, hurrying between computers like a bat out of hell. He sips his coffee calmly.
You here for help, or what?--
Nope, just here to rape your computers 'til one of them spits out my paper.
Sip. Nod. My physics teacher is a
bad ass.
Cram the disk in the drive, boot up, tap-foot tap-foot will you fucking hurry up you horrific blight on all crappy-computer-kind?! Mental yelling didn't do all that much to speed things along, but damn did it feel good. With everything finally booted and the incessant clicking ceased, I try to open the paper...
Between the lab two floors up and this lab, everything has been erased. No paper. Nothing.
See izubachi weep. Weep, izubachi, weep.
*Rrring* Aaaand that would be the bell, for a class on the opposite side of school. I had half of the paper printed already from an old rough draft. And that's what I submitted. From a student who hasn't missed an assignment, test, or quiz from day one, this is going to send my teacher into conniptions, I suspect. It's not going to particularly ruin my grade, but it's the principle of the thing, you know? Such valient procrastination efforts should have been more amply rewarded.
Oh, and the physics teacher mocked me for my troubles at the end of the day. As I said, bad ass.