It was a cold, grey day when I was called into the principal's office. I sat there waiting for him to finish on the phone. I had no idea what this was about. Was there a problem? I didn't think so. The students were good, my classes were going okay, midterms were almost all marked. I hadn't entered anything yet, but I was going to be working all weekend so I knew it would get done before the Monday deadline. I wasn't nervous, and didn't think there was any reason why I should be. He and I get along very well. So I sat and waited, mildly curious, and not at all concerned, playing with my keys in my lap. He hung up the phone and turned to look at me. He shuffled some papers on his desk and cleared his throat. "We need to talk about reports cards." Okay, this wasn't out-of-the-blue, I mean in 10 days the kids would be getting their term one report cards and it was inevitable that he would have at least one question for me about them. We did have a conversation in November though where he assured me I was not responsible for them in any way, so I wasn't sure exactly what he thought I could do for him. "What's up?" Two words that would change my life. "Well, we need a better system." Ah, okay, well perhaps I could advise on what software or format or what have you but this was starting to get suspicious. I mean what do I know about report cards? I received them for thirteen years, but otherwise? I've never submitted marks for one, I've never printed one, I've never even used the software. But okay, let's go with it. "What exactly are you looking to change?" "Well, we can't do what we did last year." He pulls out an eight page document with a mess of three letter codes and lists of percentages on each page. "This was last year." Heaven help those Chinese parents! I could barely decifer the student's mark, and I knew what the three letter codes stood for. Give this to someone who hardly speaks English, and yeah right they'll know what the heck is going on! "Yeah, this is pretty complicated for parents to understand." "Right, so we need a new system this year." "I agree." The silence hung in the air. Then it hit me. Oh, no. OH, NO! He wasn't going to say it was he? No, he said it wasn't my responsibility. NO, HE SAID IT WASN'T MY RESPONSIBILITY! He sat there, looking at me, the question plastered all over his face. AHHH!!! I can't say no. But can I actually say yes? How suicidal am I? I'm dead tired of marking and I'm looking at a 7 day work week this week already. Can I really say yes? Okay, how bad could it be? I'll read through the User Guide and find a better format for printing reports, that's all. I'll give up a few preps and find a better format and that'll be it. "Well, I guess I can look through the MarkBook stuff and find a more user friendly report format." "Great! Thanks so much!" So I grab the two two-inch black binders and head down the four flights to my classroom. I start flipping through the pages and two paragraphs in I get a sinking feeling. I call upstairs. "What type of report card software do we have?" "What do you mean?" "The book says we need to export the data to our report card software to print out report cards." "We don't have any report card software." WHY ON EARTH NOT?!?!?! "Oh, okay. Well, we can't do anything about the printing format in MarkBook, what you did last year is all the program can do." "Oh." It wasn't an 'oh' of acceptance, or of disappointment, it was an 'oh' of 'so what can you do about it?'. "Let's try printing a combined report so at least it's not eight pages." We do that. No comments. Heaven help me, nothing is going work right! There's the brick wall, and there's me running head first into it!
I'm down, I'm out for a split second and then amdist the rubble rises a new me. Not the fatigued, first year teacher, oh no, she down on the ground dying. No this was the me of three years ago. I vaguely remember this me, it starts coming back like a slow adrenaline rush starting at the base of my neck and slowly coarsing through my blood. I take a deep breath and am very aware of my racing heart beat. This part of me has been dead and is now coming back to life. I look down at the fragile figure of me lying on the ground, I shake off the feeling of pity and I look up. I can do this. I love this. Programming is my passion! "Give me a couple of days, I'll put something together." "Good. Thanks." Click. A brief feeling of, 'what did I just do?' passes through my mind, but I push it away. No time for weakness. I am computer geek, hear me roar! I dive into the program that has become the thorn in my side. I play around with export files, I have a very successful first go with everything and I'm feeling confident that I can come up with something. I spend one afternoon building a prototype repord card, show it to some people, get feedback, make changes and voila! We have a template. I'm feeling good. This can work. So I put report cards on the back burner for a few days and finish up all the midterm stuff.
Monday rolls around. It's my eighth work day in a row. Everyone's supposed to have their marks in and done by lunch. Of course they're not, but that's okay I'm not starting report cards until Tuesday. Tuesday comes. Ninth work day in a row. I put some finishing touches on my beautiful template and start exporting data to build the grade 7 reports. I come back from lunch and spend three hours working on the grade 7 class. I'm good with computers, I know to save my work. So throughout I'm saving, I'm saving, I'm saving. It's looking good. There are little gliches, nothing big. It looks good. I'm feeling good. I'm finished grade 7! I hit save and get called out of the room for a few minutes by some of my students. I deal with them and I come back. The program is closed. Why is the program closed? I didn't close the program. Who closed my program?!?! I open the grade 7 file. It's empty. Hold on, why is it empty? I saved it! Several times! Why is it empty?!?! WHAT IS GOING ON!!!! Okay, deep breaths. Just breathe and don't panic. I can overcome this. I know I can. Harness that anger and put it to good use. So I redo the three hours of work. It takes another three hours. It was just that kind of work that doesn't get any faster the more you do it. Okay, it's time to leave. School's over. I've been saving, saving, saving and saving some more. Alright the grade 7's are done, again. Last report card finished. I hit save. I sit and watch the computer. No one's getting in here to mess around with my computer this time. Why isn't it saving? Why is the hour glass still running? It's been five minutes. What's going on? Is it frozen? Shouldn't be. Oh no, that's not happening. Oh, no, no, no. Fatal error my fanny!!! This is some sick joke!! But it's not. The computer closes the program and erases everything I just did, again. I could cry. The principal comes in. "School's ending on Thursday now, so we need the report cards finished by Thursday morning. Is that going to be a problem?" YES!!!!!!!! "No, we'll figure something out. It'll get done don't worry." Wow, who is that crazy woman talking? Surely not I!! I live in the real world. The computer just erased basically everything I did today. I have 36 hours to get these report cards done. Yeah, no problem. But I'm a survivor right? At least I want to be. I won't be beaten by China, or by ancient technology! I take the data files home and I sit down at my trusty laptop. Dude I am so glad I got a Dell! I drink cup after cup of instant coffee, we don't get the good stuff here. My dinner consists of Betty Crocker icing straight out of the container with some chocolate chips on the side. I haven't been grocery shopping in two weeks and my fridge is pretty much empty. Plus I need the sugar rush. By midnight I've successfully compiled preliminary report cards for all the grades. I'm so happy I could cry. It's a common feeling right now. I try to sleep. It's going to be an early morning. Sleep doesn't come easy, too much coffee, and far to much adrenaline. By 7:30 Wednesday I'm back at school. It's my tenth work day in a row. I work away at finishing up the reports and it's time to start proofing them. I know there'll be mistakes. I had to use some short cuts to get them done, and I know there are some copy and paste errors. I stay at school until 9 pm proofing and printing the report cards. By 8:00 am Thursday, my eleventh work day in a row, the report cards are done and on the principal's desk. There are some problems that come back to me once the kids recieve their reports. Teacher's used the wrong gender in their comments, they have someone else's absences marked on their report card. But it's okay, I can fix it all pretty quickly. Wow. It's done. Thursday night I can't sleep. I'm used to not sleeping now. I really haven't for the past two nights. So I lay awake in bed thinking about how I did it. I survived! And I get to do it all again in June!