So to get some context on this thread look at my OP for this thread
Hey guy who stole my flashdrive:
I finished my 30 page thesis review. I got all my sources back, did I say 30 pages? I actually wrote 32…why? Cuz fuck you that’s why.
I finished my research topic too. I had to change subjects but I found a great book about it and ended up finishing it in about a day and a half. 20 pages long? Mine was 24…why? Cuz fuck you that’s why.
You wondered about my literature review didn’t you? You thought you really hurt me on that one since I literally had to start from scratch. I needed 150 sources…do you know how many I had? 177. It needed to be 80 pages long…how long was it? 85 pages. Why? Cuz fuck you that’s why.
You didn’t think I could do it and I did…I did better than I was supposed to on every single paper. I win. You lose. Wanna know why?
Yayy! Clearly you learned a ton this semester to be able to reconstruct it all and surpass. One of my college roommates had her laptop AND backup drive stolen from our apartment (forced entry while we were out), losing half a semester’s worth of design and theory homework. She reconstructed some from printouts but had to work from scratch on the rest. I was incredibly impressed with how well she did and I think it was a huge confidence booster for her to know that the worst can happen and she can rely on her brain to pull her through. Similarly a friend lost his whole portfolio and a bunch of copper printing plates in a house fire during his senior year. He had to build a body of work from scratch but he did it. And now you have too. Of course it would have been better had none of this happened to you, but hooray for the outcome. And thanks for sharing!!!
A lot of my classmates didn’t understand how I could be so calm the last week a half.
I guess I’m lucky that I’m just competitive enough to really get angry at the situation more so than to get all sad about it. I wonder what grade’s I’ll get now…
FWIW, you might want to let your profs know what happened. I’m a human being, and I would definitely sympathize with your situation. Not saying it would grant you a get out of jail free card, but if you need a point or two to get over the hump I might be willing to award it to the student who overcame a significant obstacle to get the assignment done.
Case in point: I had a student whose mom got very ill at the end of the semester (she came to me to explain what was happening, the story checked out [by that I mean she was a good student and it was totally within the realm of possibility]). I told her if she needed an extra day or two to work on the final paper to let me know. Final paper due date comes, and she submits her paper, stating that things were better with her mom, and she just wanted to get it in to make both of our lives easier. I was much more forgiving of the minor grammar issues and the like because of my knowledge of her situation.
And as others have said in the Pit thread you started, losing stuff on a USB drive is so 20th century. Cloud services are ubiquitous so anything other than your random Word document should be backed up. My writing is my livelihood, so you’d better believe I am never more than a day or two from being backed up. I have lost a day’s worth of work before and that really throws a wrench in the works. Can’t imagine what I’d do if I had an entire semester of stuff gone.
Dropbox is the most elegant, simple, and useful solution I’ve found. I use it for student submission and pretty much all my important work. And I’m not above e-mailing myself an important document so I can work on it later.
The other thing is, you seem pretty sure that it was stolen. It may not have been. Someone could have pulled it out of the USB port and wiped it by accident, and that would likely hose any info on the drive that might ID the owner. There are a lot of scumbags floating around campus during finals time, but my suspicion is that they are looking for laptops and books, not a $5 USB drive.
I did tell my profs and one of em actually offered me an extension on the 80 pager and I’m sure if I asked my other one would have as well…but I turned her down.
Why should I be rewarded for being an idiot and leaving the thing in the library in the first place? Or not backing it up? or not saving it in another flashdrive I have?
So don’t look too far down on them for that…they were very sympathetic and helpful to me, I’m just too stubborn of a person to accept their generosity.
Yeah, T-Cups, it’s called being human. Come and join us.
I like to know when my students are having difficulty (as well as when they are doing well). I don’t think it’s a reward as much as it is a “hey, you might need a break, and here it is.” You really learn more about people when they’re dealt a challenge than when everything is going smoothly. Glad that you have good people you’re working with though.
Awww I don’t wanna be human!!!
In all seriousness I do know what you mean, and chalk it up to a personality quirk but I hate being a charity case (I’ve had a rough last 4 years or so…so I don’t like that feeling) so I felt that an extension was a version of that.
I also know for a solid fact that her offer wasn’t that…she is a great person and a great teacher and isn’t pandering to me in the least (same thing happened to her one time honestly so she really related).
The way I looked at it was that God or the devil, or kharma or something was telling me I couldn’t do it…I should give up and cry and whine and “oh poor me”. But I am really really competitive and if you tell me I can’t do something I’ll say “fuck you I can’t do it…watch me”. So I had no social life, I missed basketball and football games, I spent 17 hour library days and I had a pretty shitty week and a half, but dammit I did it. I did it and I did it better than I should have because that’s what I do when you tell me I can’t.
I don’t mean this post to sound aggressive or anything, I just don’t want people reading this thread (and to a point you cuz you mentioned it) to think that my professors were just uncaring and cold. I love my school and I love my professors, they are great people and do care about us students. I don’t want the wrong impression to go out about them
So anyone reading this who was curious…my professors were very nice to me and were super willing to work with me. It’s my personality that stopped anything “good” from happening to me.
