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Sometimes I don’t understand people and their use of email. I don’t know about you, but when I get an email of any significance I usually read it. Let’s say you were teaching a class—we’ll call it SENG 691P. Would you consider an email with the subject SENG 691P - Assignments significant enough to read?

Monday night, I emailed 3 out of 4 assignments, due yesterday evening by 6:00 pm (the missing link being the one I forgot was due Monday by 5:00, but was for the Tuesday at 6:00 class). Anyway, in that email, I explicitly told my teacher “I lost track of the due date for the assignment [blah] that was due [Monday] by 5:00, so I won’t have it this week.” This was to prevent him from putting my name on the opening slide with the rest of the class, as he does each week, to talk about one another’s assignments. But I guess the English language failed me, because he put my name up there with a blank topic and called me out on it, having no clue I had emailed him. Without a real excuse, explaining myself in front of the entire class was exactly what I intended to avoid. It would have been much easier had he read his email (although he claims to have searched for it twice).

I’d hate having to manage an entire class and their emailed assignments, so I’m glad I don’t have to. But at the same time, it’s irritating to me when the people who do have to do it, don’t.

I think Textile is the most natural and intuitive way to format text. When I first brought it into this site, it only took a couple of hours to get used to it. And now, apparently I write it without knowing.

I had to submit a Power Point last night for a presentation I have to give in one of my classes, and I just now glanced through it again before wiping it from the task bar—what do you think I found? Not one, but two places where I threw in some Textile underscores. I guess I was thinking “File > Save” meant “Submit” and the text would magically convert itself into italics. But it didn’t. Though I do wish I could use it on desktop text processing.

From Thursday evening to Sunday evening, I’ve been doing homework pretty much non-stop. Let’s look at it in terms of hours. Since Thursday after work I’ve spent 32-35 hours finishing out the semester. It’s been a frustrating couple of days, as I’ve had to pick up the slack for group members who “forget” (on purpose) their part of certain group assignments. I’d much rather work alone. Anyway, I’m really looking forward to the next 4 weeks of no evening class and no lengthy assignments. Plus I’m not working Coca-Cola through the holidays this year, which is a first in 6 years for me.

And on a side note, I’m getting tired of reading words that contain meme. It seems like they’re all over the place now.

My last big assignment for one of my classes took me 7-8 hours; it was supposedly going to take 10-15 days. It did require a lot, but there were parts I simply didn’t know. From this assignment (and past things I’ve done), I’m finding it can be easier when I don’t know how to do it, simply because I’ll put “whatever” just to get it done. However, I think there are a couple of factors: 1) Knowing less or not caring? 2) Deadlines.

I think this is in direct relationship to simply not caring. To be honest, if I cared, I wouldn’t have put it off and crammed it in the little time space I had available (and while at work). But, since I didn’t care, there was no desire to start it.

Another thing that directly affects this thought is deadlines. I honestly work best under pressure. If I know I have time, I’ll take my time. If I know I only have 4 hours to do a 8 hour task, I’ll work twice as fast (and usually twice as efficient).

So, maybe the ultimate combination would be to “not care while approaching a deadline.” I think I could really get some work done, then. On a side note, the assignment sucked and I hated it.