Tick. Tock.

Hickory dickory dock,

The mouse ran up the clock,

The clock struck one,

And down he run,

Hickory dickory dock.

Time is running out.

It is an age old cliché, but in many ways it runs truer today than ever before.  Living in a technological age is amazing, but also comes with challenges.  Just the sheer amount of information that is created every day is astonishing.

Former Google CEO Eric Schmidt said, "There was 5 exabytes of information created between the dawn of civilization through 2003." RJMetrics CEO Robert J. Moore said in a TEDx talk recently that "23 exabytes of information was recorded and replicated in 2002. We now record and transfer that much information every seven days." (Vance)

There is SO much information created every single day, and much of it is accessible to us.  It can bog us down.  Surfing the net can be a time sucker.  Time that can (and I argue should) be used in better ways.  One of these ways is with our class assignments.

In our case, the clock strikes at midnight Mountain Standard Time. All assignments for AiO courses are due at 12am MST.  That means 2am EST, 1am CST and 11pm for PST.  I always felt living in CST time was a bonus for me. But what time zone you live in is really insignificant, you have to adjust where you are.  It is just good to know since everything is in MST, what the adjustments are for where you live.  ALL assignments, EVERY, single, one are due at 12am MST.  This set out by the college and discussion posted are automatically date and time stamped by the system.  There is no getting around it.  12:01am MST is late. 

There is a penalty for being late.  Per school policy (this is in the Course Home Announcements of EVERY class, it is always a good reminder to read them through at the beginning each time), a 10% reduction in your grade per day late can be applied.  And nothing can be submitted after the end of the week it is due.

“What’s the big deal,” you ask?  The big deal is that deadlines are deadlines.  You are given the deadlines upfront.  It is disrespectful to the instructor, fellow students and even yourself to be late.

Beyond the school environment, meeting the deadlines of assignments is a life growing skill.  In the work place, even if you have your own studio and are your own boss, you will have deadlines to meet.  There are positive consequences for honoring the deadlines and negative consequences for being late. 

In the event that you cannot avoid being late there are two pieces of advice I offer you.  First, notify your instructor as soon as possible as to why and when they can expect to see your assignment submitted.  Secondly, do not every make excuses.  Whining that your technology was slow when you were trying to get something uploaded at 11:58pm and ran into a glitch is simply annoying.  All that shows is that you did not plan well and miss-managed your time. 

There will ways be a lot of students trying to upload at the last minute, which will of course, bog down the system.  We know this, it happens every time.  Plan better and submit earlier.  The paybacks are wonderful and you will be much less stressed.

Time might be running out, but it doesn’t have to run out on you.

Hickory dickory dock.

It’s just another Manic Monday….

Monday Ambassador

Vance, Jeff. "Big Data Analytics Overview." Datamation. Quinstreet Enterprise, 13 June 2013. Web. 12 May 2014. <http://www.datamation.com/applications/big-data-analytics-overview.html>.

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