Thursday, May 31, 2012

Squirrels/School: Watch Those Deadlines!

As you mat recall, Wednesday's homework assignment was due at 11 p.m. that night, meaning my email account had to have received your story before the clock struck 11.

And the last story was received at 10:59:09 p.m.

That's 51 seconds before deadline.

Gulp!

That's cutting it really close. Try giving yourselves a bit of a time cushion, will ya?

Here's the most practical reason why: any assignment turned in after a deadline passes -- even if it's just a few seconds late -- automatically gets a zero.

Again, I'm not enforcing deadlines to be a Nazi. Rather, it's to reinforce the habit of never missing a deadline, and always making sure you're giving yourself enough wiggle room to make deadlines each and every time.

Like I've said before, if you're writing scripts for the 11 o'clock news, your scripts have to be in front of your anchors by 11 p.m., and not a minute later. The anchor doesn't have the option of telling the audience, "Hey, just hold on a minute; we're still working on our scripts." But the news director does have the option of firing you.

That's why we're trying to work on your deadline habit now, so you avoid a bigger and costlier missed deadline later.

You could always do extra credit here to make up for a time fatal. Getting a new job after you get fired with cause from your old one is a bit harder to do.


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