I feel like a kid again...

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

… because I’m putting off doing my homework. :smiley:

Of course, I didn’t have the internet to distract me back then, but I’m making up for lost time now!

It’s stupid, really: I have 25% of a 2-page paper written, I even know what I’m going to write the rest of it about, and if I’d just buckle down and get 'er done I could probably be in bed an hour from now. But nooooo. I’m going to repeatedly check my e-mail (yeah, there were no new messages 2 minutes ago, either), and share this incredibly mundane and pointless stuff here (mundane and pointless seems to be my “thing” lately), and put off finishing this stupid paper that I should have started writing on Saturday and that is due tomorrow night.

I’m a grownup. I enjoy school now. I shouldn’t be procrastinating like this. Willfully. Methodically. I guess some things really don’t ever change: I’ve always been the queen of the last-minute papers, and perhaps it was folly to believe that maturity would eradicate this trait (good last-minute papers, mind you – I have a 3.8 average in my grad work so far).

Ok. It’s almost 11pm, and I have a meeting in the morning, so it’s time to force myself to concentrate and finish this paper. Back to organizational contexts, personal and situational authority, and orality vs. literacy. Half a page down, one and a half pages to go!

2

Procrastinators Unite!

Imagine my surprise and delight when I discovered that the paper I thought was due tonight is not due until next Monday. The research and outline are done. Now I get to beat myself up for the next week for not finishing the paper until the night before.

3

Congrats on having a later deadline than you thought!

Now, what is this “outline” of which you speak? :wink:

I always dreaded having to turn in outlines when I was in high school/college (mostly high school, I think), because being someone who writes at the last minute means no time for outlines! No rough drafts, either – I revise as I go along. I know that I’ll have to write a few heavy-duty research papers for this program, though – not to mention my thesis – so I’m sure that my outline time will come. But I will put it off for as long as humanly possible. :smiley:

(I’m at the top of page two…half a page just took half an hour, but I think the rest of it will only take another half hour. I may not be done before midnight, but it won’t be much after!)

4

out…line?

Always hated those…the way I write does not lend itself to rough drafts or outlines

Oh, and what’s your email? I could send ya somethin’ every 10-15 min just to keep ya checkin’ =)

5

:slight_smile:

I finally finished around 1am. If I hadn’t continued to procrastinate I would have been done by midnight, as estimated, but apparently I’m physically incapable of writing an entire page at once. In a little while I will double-check my cites and “works cited” page to make sure they are MLA-compliant, and then I’ll print the copies that I need for tonight’s class.

See y’all again in 3 weeks, when the next paper’s due. :smiley:

6

It’s a vaguely worded, scribbled-out list of what I may want to add into the paper. It’s never in the actual order the paper turns out. Completing the “outline” allows for further procrastination by making me think I have actually accomplished something.

7

I think you’re my long lost twin sister… not that I’m in School now, but I am in the Software Engineering industry. Coding? No prob. Guess what happens when Da Man wants Analysis(?) documents, Requirements(??), Specs (???) – not to mention a full-fledged Design Document ( :confused: ). Yeah right :rolleyes:

I end up scribbling something at the last minute. Probably after it’s all coded anyway

8

Them’s fightin’ words: I’m a technical writer at a software company. Developers who submit half-assed design documents are my sworn enemies. :wink:

(Oops, I meant :mad:. Yeah, that’s it.)

9

Ah! My arch-nemesis, the Technical Writer. *
I keep ours confused by submitting my Error Message texts (for I18N) in English and making her translate them (back) into Hebrew… :smiley:

Oh… and you were winking at me? :wink:

*Just because I take my professional pride (too?) seriously: no, I don’t actually work that way. I just feel like it far too often…

10

Never put off till tomorrow what you can put off till next week, or get out of doing altogether.

Maybe later.

11

I have bad news for you. There’s a newish fad in software development called XP, or “eXtreme Programming,” whose tenets are (my wording):

  1. Anything that programmers don’t like doing is bad.
  2. Anything that involves documentation (especially design docs) is especially bad.
  3. If (1) and (2) conspire to cause a project to fail, then it’s the fault of the customer!
  4. If anything else fails, it’s the fault of management.

While this sounds like a joke, it’s actually catching on. Get out while you still can!

12

If you click on her screen name* at the top of the message, you’ll get a list of options, one of which is Send e-mail to misnomer. Click on that link and you’ll get her address.

If this option isn’t available to guests, that could be your cue to pay up. Membership has its privileges, after all!

  • or any member’s name. Note, however, that some Dopers choose not to publicize this information.
13

interesting to note that it’s the developer who gets the smilies right… could explain some of the instruction manuals i’ve seen lately… :slight_smile:

14

Not quite…I’ll just say that there’s extensive use of prototypes so as to allow the developers to get a better idea of what the customer wants. And you forgot source control…

15

That’s just not nice! :eek: :slight_smile:

Well, I winked, but then realized that it softened the otherwise stern, arch-nemesis-y tone of my message. Consider that the beta. :wink:

Oh, I know what you mean…

Oh yeah? Well, just wait until the developers hear about eXtreme Documentation (XD)! We don’t even need an application! :smiley:

I wasn’t aware of having gotten any wrong. :slight_smile:

Hmm, I have a certain phrase that I like to keep handy for situations like this … what was it again? … oh yeah: bite me. :smiley:

16

Today, I spent a great deal of the 6 six hours I set aside to do my two-page essay playing T&C Surf Design. I expended far more brain power choosing between Tiki Man and Joe Cool than on anything even remotely related to my paper so now I’m stuck here at 1:00 AM slowly punching it out.

17

What? Did I miss the memo? Is today Be-nice-to-your-technical-writer Day? Oh, you aren’t my technical writer!? OK, I’ll be nice to you then… :slight_smile:

Looks like it’s almost ready for production. We’ll need to run some Intergration Tests first, but otherwise… :wink:

Isn’t that the way things work already? You end up with a huge pile of ducuments and no project? :frowning:

I was right then, you were winking at me (:wink: back)
As for XP – seriously speaking, it’s already on the way out as a true Programming Paradigm. It is good for rapid prototyping as part of a “Spiral” development model – “let’s put together a demo and hammer out what the Specs really are by playing around with it” is actually a sound way of working.