Deadline
I wrote a short story which reflects a situation I think most of us are familiar with.
She was awake before her alarm again. This frustrated Naomi, eight minutes off a potential 5 hours of sleep can really affect a person. Naomi sat up and dragged her laptop towards herself from the bottom of her bed, over her overdue books and piles of useless notes, and placed her laptop on her lap. She had become immune to the burning sensation of the laptop amongst her thighs. Once again she sent herself her history internal assessment, but this time to both her college and personal email. Today was the final deadline, ‘9.30am, no later’ rang the voice of Mr Peppers in her head. He was an uptight man, she thought in much cruder terms, never sympathetic to his students’ personal circumstances. Knocking half the books off her cluttered bed, she leaped out of her bed and headed for the shower.
Naomi, waiting impatiently at the bus stop, pressed her finger against her lock key. Her lock screen, capturing Gerard Pique in all his glorious gorgeousness, made her smile. However the time was now 8:57am, there was no time to fantasise. She has 33 minutes to get her paper to Mr Peppers. Thirty-three minutes to go to the college library on the second floor, log on to a computer which takes at least three minutes to load, print out her final internal assessment, and hand it into Mr Peppers who’s office cleverly resided in the other building. She was “screwed”. The much awaited bus 155 takes forty minutes to arrive at the starting point of Naomi’s four minute walk to college. However, she thought, she could take the 155 to Oval station and take the tube southbound to college. That’s ten minutes on the bus, seven minutes on the tube, two minutes walking to college if she increased her pace, and fourteen minutes to print off her internal assessment and hand it to Peppers. Brilliant.
Oval station was stuffed with suits and “granny skirts”. The next tube towards Morden was one minute away. Naomi marched toward the barriers and placed her Oyster card against the reader which replied with a dreaded ‘beep beep’. Embarrassed and frustrated, she turned on her battered converses, gave unpleasant looks to those who stared, and joined the three-man-long queue formed behind the ticket machine. Naomi impatiently watched the people before her. It was ridiculous, why do the people who use the machine never prepare their money before it’s their turn? Finally, she stood before the big blue screen. It took her less than thirty seconds to tap her Oyster on the yellow reader, stuff the machine with the warm and slightly sweaty £2 coin in her hand, and load her card with the money.
It was 9:19am when Naomi next saw daylight. It was 4˚C, however Naomi was more than capable of breaking a sweat as she increased her pace. She arrived at her college in two minutes. Instead of the promised fourteen minutes to print off her work and hand it into her history teacher she had nine. Upon entering the college library Naomi was given a little relief from seeing four of her classmates frantically attempting to get their work printed out. ‘I’m not alone’ she thought. Brian and Nate towered over the printer, Jen was trying to book a computer and Kimberly was at a computer repeatedly clicking print. Kimberly would be her saviour, Naomi decided. She would no longer have to book a computer and wait three entire minutes to log on.
“Are you almost done? Can I use your computer?” whispered Naomi
“It’s not printing, do you know how many times I’ve effing clicked print?!” Kimberly said before kissing her teeth.
“Check your settings, hold on” Naomi took the computer mouse, whilst noticing the time read 9:24am in the corner of the screen. Kimberly had not located a printer for her work.
Once Kimberly’s work was sorted, there were only 4 minutes for Naomi to log into one of her many email accounts and print off 2 days worth of sleepless nights. After typing in her Gmail password incorrectly twice, a quick proof read and a click, “Print Job Sent” flashed across the screen.
With the weight of seven pages in her hand, Naomi remarkably still had one minute to get to Mr Peppers' Office. She heard a faint “where’s your ID card?” in the distance as she did a slight jog across to the other building. She entered a small, cold and quiet office. The walls were painted white but the sun illuminating through the blinds gave it a blue colour. The room overall had a cold and lifeless mood, just like Mr Peppers’ heart she thought.
“Naomi –“Mr Peppers began to smirk
“I have the essay here, sir” panted Naomi quite loudly, exaggerating to show that she made effort in her attempt to get the work in on time.
“That’s nice, but do you know when you are supposed to hand that in?”
“I’m so sorry. I know its five minutes late, but I had trouble getting to college this morning.” Was he really going to complain about five minutes? I hope he doesn’t give that ‘In University this would be unacceptable’ speech again, she thought.
“Well, this is quite pleasant for me–” Began Mr Peppers
“Huh?” Naomi Interrupted. He really is evil, she thought.
“At least that’s one piece of work I can mark early, less to do in the half term”
“Huh?” she repeated.
“The deadline’s not this Friday, well today, it’s next Friday. The eighth, the day we break up”
-Evelyn
Lessons
It’s handy to save your work on a USB stick, that way you do not have to waste time logging into an account. But save your work in ALL the places you possible can
Probably have your work printed out more than a couple of minutes before the deadline, I say half a day at least.
Make sure you always have a back up route when travelling
Get the deadline date right
