this_is_what_i_get epitome of incomprehensibility ...for working on my novel today: forgetting I had a phonetics assignment due and then finishing it a few minutes past the deadline. The course website wouldn't accept it, so I had to email it to the prof and TA with apologies. I'm always so awkward about those things, and all the while I was thinking, "If they say they won't grade it I'll be angry. Here are all the angry things I'll say [...] Although I'm really more frustrated with myself. Plus I probably got the last question wrong." And these thoughts made tears stream out of my silly eyes. It's always the same problems, or variations of the same. Usually, I can get things done, but there's always those two or three or four times per term... It's so frustrating. 220323 ... past using an online submission system to lock submissions at the deadline seems needlessly cruel. these things tend to add timestamps to the file name (or at the very least the metadata) if one must be a stickler about exact deadlines. all this is an affront to my turn of the century university experience where the "deadline" de facto meant "before the department assistant emptied the dropbox on the next business day and finished stamping the stack of papers found therein" which led to many all nighters on one of the three computers in the student lounge across the hall from said dropbox. 220324 ... past (although during my stint as a slightly itinerant adjunct i made good use of online submission sites, but my late policy was basically "shit happens but just try to let me know" style free for all.) 220324 ... e_o_i I don't know if impersonal is cruel, necessarily, but last week I definitely felt like whining "no one understands!" That's what it felt like, though there are plenty of people who are bad at deadlines because of similar ADHD-anxiety combos or whatever else. What gets me is that the problem is both external (people thinking timeliness with deadlines is a mark of maturity and effort) and internal (me, avoidant, doing other things when I should be working - when I CAN be working), and that I can bring only a tiny bit of change (if any) to the former and only incremental and intermittent change to the latter. And that, human nature being what it is, if I get better at doing things quickly, I might turn on those who aren't so good at it because I want to distance myself from the problem. I hope I never come to that point, or that I'm jolted out of it if I am. All that to say, Dad didn't understand it when I read the email from the prof that said, "I'll accept this without penalty, but from now on the deadlines are final" or something to that effect...and immediately burst into tears. "But that's good news, isn't it?" It's not good because I'm always made to feel inadequate for not being good at this one thing. It's not good even if it's mostly in my head. 220329 ... past that's the key! knowing which deadlines (either that have been set for you or that you have set for others) actually need to be firm is a really difficult skill, but really essential too. it's a sort of balancing of humility and pride. both are essential! (also all my "how to teach in a university" classes emphasized the first rule of teaching and ta-ing is don't be an asshole, on purpose or otherwise. firm deadlines strike me as failing that rule, unless there's good pedagogical reason. are you doing group revisions? is your part feeding into a greater whole? or is it just because?) 220330 what's it to you? who go blather from