A toaster sent me into a panic last week.
It was Thursday evening. I had spent all day working on my final essay for class – I had completed my long lists of works cited and everything. My notes and books were stacked next to me, ready to be recycled or returned to the library. All that I had left was a concluding paragraph…
Den had arraved home and was making himself some dinner. The microwave was going when he started the toaster and…Black. The toaster popped the breaker, cutting power to the kitchen and the computer desk, which is just around the corner from the kitchen. Off he went to talk to the landlord and restore power. I hopped into the shower so I would be energized and ready to tackle the final paragraph of my essay and submit it electronically to my professor.
When I returned to the computer, I could tell that something was…wrong. It restarted as I had expected it to, but there was no message from my word processor indicating that there was a document to recover. I knew it had been saving periodically, so I wasn’t worried about losing my work. I opened the file only to discover that my entire days work was gone. All. Gone. 4 pages! My jaw dropped. I’m sure I made some sort of frightened, devastated noise. My exam for this class was the next morning at 9 AM. How would I study and finish the paper? I was panicking.
Wait, I told myself. This can’t be right. Auto-save, remember? I dove into my files and tried to find the rest of my work. Try as I might, I couldn’t find it. I was near to tears when Denis told me to email my professor and then go study while he tried to find the file.
Fast forward an hour or so…my darling husband saved the day! I finished the essay and sent it off to my professor. You think this kind of thing is only ever a ’story’ that students tell profs to get an extension…well, I can attest to the fact that it is completely real and possible. And frightening!
Have you had a similar experience where you thought you lost something really important?
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Oh my gosh, that is so scary! I had something scary happen when in university too. I had this new-fangled (at the time) electronic word-processor. Well, I didn’t realize that it worked through thermal printing. So I printed off a 30 page paper, placed it in a folder, and sat it on the sill (which happened to be right over the radiator) where I could find it the next morning and turn it in. I went to my prof’s office and handed in the folder and was shocked when he came running down the hallway after me, wanting to know where “the real paper was”. He was my faculty advisor and we had a pretty friendly relationship so I thought he was joking and conversely he thought I was playing a joke on him. Suddenly I realized he was serious and I panicked when he opened the folder and showed me 30 blank pages!!! The heat from the rad had obliterated the thermal imaging on the paper and my report was gone. Fortunately he gave me time to go back and type it back up again (this machine had very limited memory but thankfully I still had the notes I had typed from) and I learned to take the reports printed on the thermal paper to get photocopied from then on!
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I lost most of a 15 page paper in my last year of university. It totally sucked, I had to re-write basically all of it!
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That would send me into a complete panic attack. In college I always, always, always waited for the last minute to do my papers. Thankfully nothing like that ever happened but I’m pretty sure I would have just cried. Yay for Denis saving the day!!
Umm. Yes. Only my paper was lost, never to be found again. I’m so happy you have a good hubby who knows a thing or two about computers! (Not that you don’t, but you know what I mean)
Matt and I wrote out a wedding speech that he was going to say. When it was time for speeches at the reception he realized he had took it out to look over while the boys were doing pictures but must have lost it somewhere along the way. I quickly scribbled down the people we wanted to make sure we thanked and he said most of what we wanted to, but it was so stressful at the time!
In middle school I had one of my teachers lose one of my book reports twice. The same one. The first time was before she graded it, and I think the second was when she was going to give it back to me. I had to reprint it for her to grade (luckily she was an extremely chill old lady who liked me). She found the second copy to give back to me, finally. She also lost her keys once a month or so. She retired after that year.
Just this semester I had my computer crash the day before our first major essay was due. Luckily I only use my computer to write the final draft and had the rough draft on loose leaf beside me. I had made a bunch of changes though so it still took awhile…. but thankfully I still got it in on time. I understand what that’s like…. it feels like the end of the world!
My sanity. Pretty much every day.