Caution! Venting Zone Ahead!

Sometimes, even people who are detail oriented miss the details.

My thesis is due on Monday. As in, final draft. As in, convert it to a pdf and submit it electronically. As in, my whole committee, the chair of the English department, the Dean of the college of arts and sciences, and the dean of the graduate school have to sign off on it.

I didn't want to have to worry about it over the weekend, so I set myself a goal to finish it today.

I called the Dean's office to make sure he would be in his office today. I dropped the form off at 12. It took until 3 for him to sign it. No big deal, right? I was busy trying to convince Microsoft Word that it is not smarter than I am. Changing page numbers, margins, doing one final proofread.

At 3, the Dean's office calls to say my form is ready. Around that same time, I successfully complete the pdf conversion. Pick up the form, drive to the Polsky building (it's cold, I'm not walking 30 minutes round trip just to drop off some papers). It's now 3:30. I'm in a great mood because I think my thesis will be 100% finished in just a few minutes.

But no, that's just not how life works. I wait for fifteen minutes in the grad school office to hand someone my forms. She takes one look at my signature page and says, "Your margins are wrong. You're going to need a new form."

Great. Just flippin' great. Have I mentioned that I am in a consortial program? That one of my committee members lives in Youngstown and the other lives in Salem (which may as well be Pennsyl-freaking-vania)? Both of these places are at least an hour from Akron. And 45 minutes from each other. I'm instantly thinking, great, I'm going to have to drive around for 3 hours on Monday morning getting these signatures so I don't miss the deadline. I tell the girl with the ruler in her hand that I have a major problem with said ruler. She looks at me like I killed her puppy.

I apologize, say I didn't mean to be rude, it's just, well, I can't easily get these signatures again. No worries, the Monday deadline is just a submission deadline. You don't really have to have everything perfect until the day before commencement. Everyone has to make changes after they turn everything in the first time.

Okay, fine. But if everyone has to make changes, why on Earth do I have to convert it to a pdf first? And if the form has to be so damn perfect, then why don't they generate one for us to use? Seems to me, that would make everyone's lives a whole lot easier. But I'm just a poet, what do I know?

You know what else sucks? Not drinking soda for a whole week. Coffee is not the same. I miss my carbonated sugar.

Oh, yeah, and then I get home and there are 2 rejections in the mailbox. Hello salt, meet wound.