Friday, March 12, 2010

Your Reports in My Handwriting

I still haven’t gotten used to the idea that every time teachers have a due date for formal paperwork, it inevitably translates to me typing everyone else’s stuff. Ideally I would have them type their own stuff, but faced with spending copious amounts of time in the computer lab keeping things in line, I cry uncle and agree to do the typing. I usually split duties with the school secretary; and so the marathon typing begins.

Today a teacher came up to me to ask about a letter she needs to write to someone in New York. At first I think she wanted me to write the entire letter, but I convinced her she should come up with her own draft and then I could polish her draft. And I’d type it of course. This kind of project makes me happy.

An example of a project that doesn’t make me happy is as follows: Another teacher approached me Thursday to ask if I’d type a document for him. He hands me a business studies assignment from another college with the name of the college whited out and my school’s name written over it. He wanted me to re-type everything so our school’s name would be written at the top. Grrrrr.

Part of the reason teachers ask for this kind of thing is because the South Pacific Board of Education looks over everybody’s stuff and I guess the assumption is that if they hand in some shoddy xeroxed version, it would reflect poorly on the school, but a fresh typed version someone maintains a modicum of respect. It’s kind of like in Back to the Future when Biff Tanon asks George McFly, “Do you know what would happen if I turned in my reports in your handwriting? I’d get fired. You wouldn’t want that to happen, wouldja? Wouldja?”

And just like George McFly, I’m a pushover. And I type stuff that someone else has clearly spent well over an hour typing.

This situation became particularly aggravating this morning when I went to print the business studies report on my secretary’s computer. See, the assignment I typed for the business studies teacher involved a bunch of financial statements, which I created by inserting Excel spreadsheets into my Microsoft Word document. Apparently when you create such a document in Word 2007, save it as a .doc file, and then open it in Word 2003, it destroys the entire thing.

I typed up the entire thing (8 pages!) last night, and it destroyed it this morning. So I retyped the first 3 pages at home during Interval today, only to fall into the exact same trap. So after school I spent another hour typing the same 8 pages I typed last night. But now I’m really really familiar with the internal assessment for the Year 13 accounting students. Hooray.

I hope you’re well. Happy Birthday Margarita! Pictures will be posted later tonight, or more likely, tomorrow morning.

2 comments:

Amanda said...

George McFly is in Alice in Wonderland & I just got home from seeing that movie. How fuuuuuun. Let's have a Mavis Beacon wpm typing competition when you get home. I hope you're out having fun!

Unknown said...

Unless you save the 2007 version into a 2003 compatible file, it won't work... or is that you did?