Redemption

With Thursday's computer crash, I scrambled to find a computer with Photoshop to redo my copy block project for my online journalism class. My roommate asked if the teacher would give me an extention because of what had happened.

"This guy...no. If I don't have my thing in class he'll look at me and say 'If this was the real world, you'd be fired.' I just need to redo the damn thing."

I eventually found a computer lab with Adobe Photoshop loaded onto its computers. It was late Thursday afternoon and I needed to eat before volleyball practice that night. I decided I'd come in at 8 a.m. Friday morning, two hours before class and do the project...again.

I woke up this morning at 7 a.m. I brushed my teeth, made scrambled eggs (and they were good), cursed my broken computer, and left. I got to the computer lab at 8:15 a.m. I immediately got to work. Within an hour, I had put together what I considered to be a work of art. I emailed it to my roommate to show off.

"Brad, take a look at how this thing turned out. I'm happy," read the email. I was going to pull it off. I printed it out, stuffed it in my backpack, and took off for class.

When I got to the building, I was 30 minutes early. My teacher was in Annenberg's lobby as usual meeting with a student. I acknowledged him, said hi and made my way to the bathroom. When I came back into the lobby, the student he was talking to was gone. He called me over.

He told me my blogs could be better...the usual.

"You'll like this week," I said. "It's about my battle with tech support people."

I explained to my professor about my computer troubles and how I lost a big paper as well as the project for his class.

"You know, Josh, there are computer labs all over campus that students have access to," he said.

Thank you Mr. Information. I'm aware there are computer labs. Maybe he didn't mean it like that, but I wasn't in a good enough mood to not be upset. Don't talk to me assuming that I didn't do the work and won't be handing anything in. I fucking did it. I did it this morning. I might have only worked on it for an hour, but damn it it's good.

"Oh, I did," I said back. I was so pissed. After all the shit I had dealt with the day before - the computer crash, my car problems, retyping an entire paper, and searching for a computer with Photoshop - I didn't want to hear this guy lecture me about responsibility because he thought I may not have it. I wasn't about to start making excuses for myself. I had excuses. I had plenty, but this wasn't a time for that.

"Does it have fire in it?" he asked. The story was about a fire. If the project calls for a "dominant image" and it's about a fire, then YES I'll put fire in the image. I didn't have the patience for a comment like that after the past 24 hours I'd had.

"Yes. Here." I pulled it out of my backpack and threw it on the table in front of us. At that point, I was ready for an F. I didn't even care. Just the fact that I did the project when he thought I didn't was good enough for me. He couldn't deny that I at least tried to put something together after losing my original project.

"This is what I was looking for," he said. He picked it up and looked it over, seemingly happy about my work. I didn't understand why and I didn't care. I just wanted to make it through the day without more problems piling up.

After critiquing my work, he put it back down on the table, pulled out a red pen and wrote the following on my copy block:

99 A

"Are you joking?" I said.

"Why would I joke about that," my professor responded candidly.

HELL YEAH! I thought to myself. HELL YEAH! I FUCKIN' DID IT! After all the crap I put up with this week, I came through and did a fuckin' awesome copy block. I knew I thought it was good, but with this teacher, I can never tell. Talk about an Adrenalin rush. Hopefully I can keep it up. Maybe I should do all my assignments an hour before class.

...or maybe not.