By: Tech Savvy
In life, especially college life, you are expected to meet deadlines. If it’s not your paper, it’s your presentation. If it’s not your dinner date, it’s your doctor’s appointment. You do whatever you need to do on time, because someone asked you, or told you to do it, and you expect a certain outcome. If you go to the dentist every six months like they say, and follow their instructions, you’ll have healthy teeth. If you meet your date at the right restaurant, on time, and the conversation goes well, you have a slightly better chance of getting some. If you hand in your paper on time your professor might actually look at it.
Right now, and at any given moment, you could be doing anything. And, fudge yeah, there are some nights where you don’t do any homework and just play Call of Duty for way too long, stopping only to drink or smoke and eat. But most of the time, there’s work to be done and a deadline to meet.
Then it happens. Your schedule rearranges around accomplishing a specific task by a certain point in time and this task must be held at higher priority than drinking, socializing, and your other escapades, if only temporarily. You read, study, write, read, study, write, lather, rinse, repeat and by handing in the assignment on time; you hold up your part of the agreement. With your end of the bargain held up, you expect the other party to follow through. Your professor will read the paper and return it in a timely fashion.
Here’s something to think about though. Imagine if he or she just didn’t bother. Imagine you go the rest of the semester not hearing a single word about the work that you did. Your professor simply ignores everybody’s paper. That paper kept you from getting stuff-housed and laid that one weekend, and he doesn’t even have the time to read it. Initial thought…
‘UMMMMMM FUCK YOU? FUCK YOU REALLY, REALLY HARD?’
Before you yell that at anyone, especially at your teacher, take a step back. Whether or not the test gets graded or the paper gets read, you will (probably) still pass the course. However, life isn’t only about college, so let’s be clear about this; I’m not just talking about a homework assignment, but rather anything that comes up in your life that occurs as a deadline. So while the ‘Fuck you!’ is definitely still a very valid feeling, you’re not actually pissed that your essay on how bees communicate through dance didn’t get read. What’s the real issue?
The real issue is – what the fudge is the point?
What the fudge is the point of a strict, agreed upon deadline in the first place, if the person giving you the deadline doesn’t hold up his end?
In a perfect world, you would know the paper wouldn’t get read, and you wouldn’t have written it. If you knew the first date wouldn’t lead to a second date, you wouldn’t go on it. If you knew she was your cousin, you would have never… well that’s different.
In the perfect world version of these event, you know what the other party’s future actions will be, so your choice for how to structure your life on your end was based on knowing the outcome. You didn’t end up wasting your time, because you had no reason to have expectations.
The thing to take away here, is that you better be clear about the agreements involved in the deadlines in your life, or else sooner or later you will get pissed off and go postal.
Maybe my whole homework assignment metaphor doesn’t actually work, because yes, you do have to hand in the paper. But in your real life, if you find yourself in repeating situations and meeting deadlines in life where you are holding up your end of the bargain and the other party isn’t, it’s time to call them out on their lack of integrity and, if they aren’t up to it, ask yourself – ‘what the fudge is the point?’
