Tuesday, July 19, 2011

Diagnosing the Problem

Yesterday I walked home from school feeling exhausted. I felt the sense of accomplishment that usually accompanies pure exhaustion when suddenly it hit me: what had I actually accomplished? I had walked to school late, leaving my house when the morning assembly usually begins. Upon arriving at school I had not attended the assembly. Instead, I had opened up the staff room, turned on the copier, and put on my glasses, prepping myself for the day of photocopying at hand. It is exam week and so naturally on the first day of the exams, all of the teachers run to me to ask me to copy their exams that they had created over the weekend. I have been encouraging them to learn to use the copier themselves and type their own exams since it will be upon them when I am gone next year, but I make exceptions for exams week, knowing that they are all very busy preparing tests for five subjects, where as I am done after making my two for English and Reading. In anticipation for this, I had prepared my English Exam last week, knowing I would be swamped with requests to type, copy, and staple this week.

I began my copies and all was well. Then, tragedy struck: a teacher brought me her exam to type, and the computer would not turn on! Walking home later in my exhaustion, I thought back on the day of mindless copying and computer failure. To the best of my abilities, I had tried to figure out what was wrong, but in the end, I had made only the most basic of diagnoses: that something was most definitely wrong! I caught myself feeling accomplished and laughed out loud at the absurdity of it all. Today, the computer people will be called and we will try to work this out over the phone. Tomorrow, hopefully we can all get back to our normal routine of typing and printing, just in time for the final exams.

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