Monday, June 13, 2011

Well, that was a bit dramatic!

Last night I poured a very generous glass of wine to bid farewell to this quarter of school. For all my procrastination I did actually enjoy the classes I took this quarter, at least until yesterday.

I had finished my final paper and submitted it, and then it was time to take all my Lecture journal bullet points and comments from the last ten weeks and format them into a two column document. The hard work was done right? The thinking and writing part was complete. I was planning that I would copy and paste and bing-bam-boom send it off. WRONG.

The two column format I tried to use meant that everything I needed to keep lined up across from each other kept getting shunted with every new line I added. I gave up on that after an hour or so and tried putting it in a table. This got rid of the shunting problem but every few minutes the columns would change width for no reason. I kept thinking I was doing something that I wasn't aware of, but at one point I did even have my hands near the computer and it switched. I changed computers, convinced it was my lap top acting up an I emailed all the original files so I could access them on our grandad desk top.

At first this seemed to fix the problem but then the dreaded shrinking column thing happened again. By this time it was 5 or so hours into this process, and I lost it and burst into tears feeling totally helpless to change my situation and get my assignment ready to hand in.

By the time Jeremy came home I was a wet sobbing mess. Still clicking around and trying to figure it out but feeling utterly defeated and so frustrated that these machines were making me feel so stupid.

Of course he held my shoulders, looked me in the eye, told me to take a deep breath and convinced me it would be ok. I was being rather dramatic but in the moment it was a big deal!

He looked at some settings on the computer and I guess I had a setting somewhere that fit the test to the table which stretched it out. Once he changed that it was all good and he then copied and pasted my lecture points into the new documents. He just kept telling me how proud he was of me and that it would be ok - I believed him. And he was right. I got the assignment in before the deadline. No one would have even known about my melt down. The relief just flooded me once I had hit send.

So another quarter is behind me. (Passing grades from this quarter permitting) I have 35 credits towards my Associates Degree. Yay me!

Today feels wonderfully self-indulgent. I went to get my hair cut, wandered around my favourite grocery store (I know, I know, I know how to party - shoot me it's a guilty pleasure to take my time). I am catching up with some phone calls and am excited to have the excuse to go clothes shopping too, a girl's gotta have a new dress for a friend's wedding, right?

I am enjoying the space to breath.

2 comments:

  1. I hate it too when the computer decides to think for itself and won't listen to us. Ugh. Glad the quarter is behind you and you can look forward to some down time!

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  2. oh my gosh! the wandering the grocery store... i totally appreciate that too! :) glad you are done and hooray for wonderful and supportive husbands! (one per customer)

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