Be Excellent To Each Other

I seem to have left a 5000 word "Learning Journal" until about five minutes ago. And it has to be in tomorrow before 4PM. I'm at work 9-5 with a lunch break to hand it in. So it has to be done before around 8AM.

I have to recall 12 weeks of lectures, without notes, and write about them, reflect on them, etc.

I really wish I'd made notes.

Has anybody else done anything as utterly stupid as this recently? I mean, I could've done half of the fucker last night but I chose not to. I could've done a couple of hundred words a week for 12 weeks...

Bah!

Phone in sick.

This will give you more time, so you can leave it a bit longer before you start.

I once misread the deadline for an important assignment as Thursday 18/05 when in fact it was Tuesday 16/05. I realised this on the Wednesday, GNGGH.

This. At the very least you can use your time to further enjoyably procrastinate.

...

And I don't mean inseminating Craster.

I regularly have exactly this dream - that there's a crucial piece of coursework that I'd been told about at the start of the course and then completely forgotten about until the day before it's due (or, more regularly, until a week before I'm supposed to be graduating only to discover that I won't be graduating after all).

Never done it, but I did once spend two weeks making a presentation only to have my PC delete its entire hard drive when I tried to back the file up to a CD the night before I was due to present it. Had to spend all night recreating it. And re-installing bloody Windows.

I have an entire years worth of uni work to do by the end of the month.

I don't know whether to laugh or cry.Or play some more Forza 2.

If you stopped caring so much there wouldn’t even be a problem.

A lesson learned.

Well this is just the tip of the iceberg - I've got three other modules on the go, and I always do my assignments the night before. I really fucking shouldn't but I always always do. Phoning in sick would do nothing but give me more time to procrastinate (as has been said, you lazy bastards), and it'd piss off my boss. It is tempting, though.

I quite often left Uni coursework to the last possible moment thinking "Meh, tomorrow. I shall sit on the PC and browse teh interwebs". Then, the night before I'd sit down, cane something (anything) out and email it in about 3 minutes before deadline.

Those were some of my highest marked pieces. Srsly.

Have you found yourself counting how many words you have written yet?

Then trying to work out how long it will take to finish at your current work rate.

Then finding that you're twenty words ahead of the pace, so you justify taking a 10 minute break.

I did this all of the time at Uni. I started essays the midnight before they had to be handed in. I always came within the top two marks, so, actually, more fool on the people that spent weeks on their essays. I always put it down to the fact that because I did not research as much as many of the other students, and had to make do with plucking resources from what was around me I was the only person that wasn't handing in idenikit essays all of the time and so had to formulate my own opinions.

I was once presented with a completely unexpected question and answer session about a dance performance, because the idiot tutor had mistakenly told us that it was a purely practical exam, so we were each called in to explain the analysis behind the choreography. I was first up, so I had the least (ie, no) warning.

I was told later just how well I had improvised. In fact, the tutor's words were 'that was the best bit of bull-shitting I have ever heard in my life'.

Once you have it handed in tomorrow and get back home, treat yourself to a lovely bleary-eyed afternoon nap. It's a lovely reward.

I managed a 2:1 doing exactly this sort of thing, but I'm a little worried about this one because it's a Master's. Higher standards and that. I'm seriously tempted to just go to bed and fail the module, though.

Keep at it, chuck. You'll feel knackered in the morning, but the sense of achievement at beating sleep and handing it over is worth it.

Here' a motivational picture to keep you going:

Argh!

You now have 6 hours and 31 minutes until your 8 AM deadline.

Tick Tock......

Quick, Wonderdog! You are my only hope; deliver this most excellent coursework before my deadline expires!

Are ypu still awake?
If so, why the fuck are you checking this thread? Get back to work, you lazy cunt!

If my old essay days are anything to go by, our jonarob will have finished most of the vodka by now and will not remember anything that happens from now until about 8am, when he wakes up with an empty bottle and a surprisingly coherent essay.

When I had an essay that I’d left too late, I’d always resent other people who didn’t have to do them.

Thankfully, I’m now ‘other’ people and can laugh about it now.

Hopefully this provides some comfort.

I''ve been up all night. PhDs mean this kind of idiocy is normal.

I go beddy byes now though. Hurray!

I did most of my essays overnight, didn't go to a single lecture after my first week and still scraped a 2ii. (That is how you write "two two" isn't it?)

But, then, I was doing a PPE degree where it was all philosophy with a sprinkling of politics and my final degree was based entirely on two weeks of final exams, no coursework. So, I basically used the few names and theories I remembered and bullshitted the rest, which isn't too hard in philosophy. Good enough to scrape through exams. (And it helped that I did know quite a lot about the philosophy of religion and managed a great mark in that paper which pulled my degree up from a third.)

That's what my degree taught me more than anything - thinking logically, thinking on my feet, getting deadlines extended and bullshitting. Far more important than remembering how Descartes got round his theory of doubt by bringing God into things, or whatever.

I do think it's helped me as a programmer. I'm better able to break down complex processes into small tasks and - crucially - keep the powers that be off my back while I get things done (or post on forums at 8:30am) because of the things I learned scraping through university by the skin of my teeth. I'd have got far less useful real world skills out of it if I'd actually read all the books and done the essays during the day and got everything done properly.

Definitely the worst essay I've ever done. But it's better to hand in something than nothing. Probably. I'm becoming a little tired with the MA thing, though. It's a load of bollocks and not at all what I'm interested in. I don't know why I did it. But it cost me 4 grand, so I have to see it out. BAH!

Thanks for the moral support and anecdotes, folks!

I did the exact same thing, but with a Quantum Mechanics exam at University.

Oops.

Maybe you read it correctly, but the date changed because you observed it.

I avoided all of this be being a proper fucking grafter when I left school and not some ponce who goes to some posh "university". I worked on the roads, don't you know, etc.

Are you trying to suggest that learning how to scam money out of your parents wasn't a valuable life skill to have learnt whilst at university?

I avoided all of this be being a proper fucking grafter when I left school and funded myself through university (with the help of the Government, of course) and not some ponce who goes to "university" for a few weeks at a time before buggering off back to their mother's teat.

I would rather have worked on the roads, don't you know, etc.

I had a place at Brighton, but couldn't afford to go. It makes me happy or sad, depending on what mood I'm in.
Still - how many of you are certified to drive a JCB and dig up her maj's roads, huh?

I can only dream, Grim..., I can only dream

Good answer.

I see your "working on the roads" and raise you a "living on Teesside and attending the University of Teesside".

I think I win.

I think I missed the same exam, you knew where it was, I knew when it was, if only we could have known both!

Ba-ba-boom... tish!


(Sorry)

Up the Boro!

How'd it go, Jonarobajonno?

As there seems to be a fair few past masters in the art leaving everything to the last minute on here, does this workload seem doable in 4/5 weeks?

15 second hand drawn cell animation.
25 second xsi computer animation.
1 minute script+concept art+storyboard+animatic
2 x A3 figure drawing
700 word film review

So yeah, doable?Or am i being hopelssly optimistic and destined to be shown the door by the lovely people at Teesside Uni?

I'd be stuffed if I had to do just one of those things in 4/5 weeks.

You're fucked. Come and fix my floorboards instead.

I have no idea about any other than the review, which you should hopefully be able to knock out in an hour.

With a week to go before my undergrad dissertation was due in, and almost no progress made to date, I decided to spend the afternoon reflashing my BIOS to a beta grade one that promised greater performance in Half-Life. It didn't, and when I flashed back to the production one, it killed the motherboard stone dead. I had to swap the mobo out of my only other running system, a tiny little Shuttle one, into my enormous full tower case and work on that. Somewhere I have pics of the motherboard totally lost in the upper corner of the case.

Then, with hours to go and scrambling to get it printed and bound, I accidentally deleted the entire thing when I slipped with the command prompt, and then watched in horror as the print job in progress then crashed. Thinking a bit quick I snagged the PDF files from out of the printer queue before the system cleaned the print job up, reprinted, and calmly strolled into college nearly half an hour late, only to join the fifty people long queue for submission. I was quite pleased with myself for that.

Imagine if everybody had a similar hectic tale of misfortune at the same time! You could edit clips of them together and have a really cool short film.

This sounds remarkably like my undergrad projects. Except power cuts were to blame for my issues. (Say goodbye to 3 hours of work 1 hour before deadline? Why, thank you. I do work well before deadlines after that.

Hey I didn't say that! I think you fluffed the quote up, Davey boy!

Also, my essay turned out shite. Obviously I won't know for certain for a while, but it's definitely shite.

It's just a direct quote, I didn't alter it at all. Someone else must have fluffed it up earlier.

Musta been me. Sorry.

As for MrD's idea of a compilation of video short fuckuppery incidents, surely it should be set to the Benny Hill music?

I started Uni in October 1993, (M Sci in Physcis at Imperial College - yes look impressed the 2nd "hardest" degreee in the UK!) and took my 2nd year exams in May/June 1995. On July the 9th I Flew to America for an 8 week Holiday with some friends. I think I phoned my parents on the 11th of July and then again on the 1st of September. I found out that I had to do a retake on Monday the 4th of Septemeber at 09:00. My Flight was due to land at Heathrow Airport at about 09:30 on Monday the 4th September!

Needless to say I dropped out and got a job instead!

Malc

No way, you'd do it a bit more serious than Benny Hill. You'd do it like a sequel to Ferris Bueller. You're all rushing about finding bits of paper and stuff, one of you is trying to staple it together by pushing it under the leg of a table and jumping on it, somebody else is fighting with their dog to get some pages back... soon you're all running, skateboarding, driving or hopping with one shoe on toward the school.

You all meet up at the school gates when suddenly.



I'VE GOT YOU NOW, MISTER GAYWOOD.

Post-breakdown-FTFY

edit: do you 'do' physics, Malc?

Nah, I've done lots of things since then (including: cyberhost, IT Manager, Customer Service grunt, "Star" of S.E. Asian TV and 90's UK Satelite TV, Interent Gaming Host) but nothing really to do with Physics.

Malc