Deadlines

I've missed several in the last week.

First, my Form 2 reports. Due Wednesday, 12:30pm. I was only a few hours late in the beginning but then thought I could do it at home with the school's new, fancy web-based report system... but no. And then the internet was down the next day at school (which was handy because it meant that the rest of the deadlines following my missed one could not be kept, so I had a bit of undeserved extra time).

On Friday my Form 3 reports were due, 12:30pm. By that stage I was exhausted from marking, overwhelmed at the thought of keeping my deadlines, and mad at the authorities for scheduling a Literature essay-based exam on the last day of exams and expecting all 100+ scripts to be marked in 48 hours and reports based on those marks in the next morning. So that fact is, I could probably have stayed late into Friday afternoon and finished and only been a few hours late... but I didn't. I went home. (And got them in first thing Monday before anyone was the wiser).

Okay, so its not a good habit to miss deadlines, I realise that, and in the past I've always been an almost ridiculous stickler for the rules, but the fact that I was so relaxed about missing these school ones (the first was sort of not my fault, or at least less my fault than the second which was totally a choice and my fault) shows something quite cool. I'm comfortable at W. I feel confident in my position here, so much that I realise that first, missing deadlines occasionally is probably not the end of the world and second, if there are near world-ending ramifications such as being shouted or frowned in next week's staff meeting... I probably will survive.

So missing deadlines at school, not a good thing, but being comfortable and confident in a place, definitely a good thing.

And a worrying thought that I'm not going to deal much on: this blog post is two days late and I feel more guiltly about that than missing my report deadlines.