Today’s daily prompt is about deadlines. Living in the twenty first century for quite some time I have been part of the whole compulsory school routine, and I was always labelled a “good” student, though it was perhaps because I was the only pupil that didn’t talk and therefore gave the teachers some peace and quiet, I’ve been through the whole shebang, GCSE’s, A-Levels and now I’m about to finish my first year at university. Within those years I have had plenty of deadlines.
The truth is I wasn’t actually a very good student at all. I never met deadlines, and I actually have no sensible solutions for meeting them as the post suggests me to write about. I’ve coasted in the education ocean for most of the time and have got away with not handing in many pieces of homework. My favourite excuse is the one I gave to my Latin and Classics teacher. The excuse was that I couldn’t hand in my homework because the ceiling fell on it. It was true, the ceiling did fall down and when I heard the crash and commotion I instantly asked my sister “what did you do?” and it was caused by some leakage in the water pipes but it did not destroy my Latin books, the truth was that I couldn’t find it. To make it believable I told my teacher he could call mum to confirm it and came in the next lesson with a water damaged book (having dunked it in the bath for added effect). But I digress.
When it comes to deadlines I have never been very good. I’ve been appalling, I have always left it to the last minute, I don’t suggest you do. One time I left some important English Language coursework to six hours before I had to be in school to hand it in…subsequently I got a fail, which I deserved. Now at Uni I’ve been no better. I still leave it to the last minute and spend the night before panicking and renting every book I can get my hands on from the campus library. One essay I even handed in a week late. What I do when I have a deadline is I will spend days either handling other pieces of work with a much more urgent deadline and then on the evening realise I still haven’t done that essay on Virgil. I panic, then think of what I could say (I don’t wrote it down because obviously at that point I am in the library chasing up books) I then head to the shop to stock up on all-nighter survival essentials. And then I spend the rest of the night typing and typing furiously on my keyboard trying to meet the word count with desperate hope.
By the end I am knackered. Lucozade is starting to run out and bed suddenly sleeping in jeans suddenly seems much comfier than before. By the end I have written and successfully(ish) referenced an essay. To make sure that a technological blip ruins it all I save it onto TWO memory sticks and email the document to THREE addresses before I lug all the books and my memory stick to the campus library with a pocket full of change in case there are printing mishaps. I print the document off and most of the time it inly just manages to happen with three printers deciding not to print the entire contents or jamming the paper, and then I submit it checking that I have posted it online at least five times and then taking the work to the office. On a due date I pretend no lectures exist and then go back to my bed, my eyeballs aching in the sun, and then go to sleep.
Ultimately my tip for writing essays is not to be me, not to think that one night is enough, and not to panic. What could be so hard about writing 200 words a day?
That's So Phie 