The problem this year with my new eighth of a job is that the data we usually use to start our school year isn't coming on time. This means we have to create the data we need. Pissah. Luckily, my cohort and I have back-up data, and, with the help of our whole fabulous team, we manage to collect 67% of the data we need by Friday, with the other 33% due at any moment.
The data processing will take about four hours total with two of us working, including making all the copies we need to distribute to various WIP (Wicked Important People). This is all fine and good, except that we only have forty-five minutes to accomplish this goal.
We start by signing out the machine that will score the data for about 400 Scantron sheets. As we are rolling the machine down the hall, another teacher comes up to us and attempts to hijack the machine. I, Wimpy Dumpy One, almost give in. After all, he only has 200 items; we have 400 items.
My cohort, Mighty Tiny One, steps into the line of fire and wields her sword. Clearly, if anyone gets in the way of our data collection, he or she will resemble the Black Knight standing in the way of the search for the Holy Grail, and no one is biting off our legs today.
We run our data through the machine, and our co-planning time is almost up. While I wheel the Scantron machine to the patient teacher so he can run his data, my cohort starts the slow, painful process of entering and calculating data. Well, I suspect that she suspects that's it is painful. I figure we will do all the calculating at another time because, hey, our time is done and it's Friday afternoon, and we are supposed to pretend that we have lives.
The problem is: I am itching to process the data. I mean, it's MATH! This is the shit I do for FUN! I try to talk Mighty Tiny One down: We have time; this isn't due today; we still have another week until we really need to worry about this.
Turns out to my cohort is as much a data geek as am I. We agree to work only fifteen more minutes on the data and split the chore in half. Fifteen minutes turns into thirty minutes. I have work that I really must do, so I take a twenty minute hiatus, as does she, to get prepped for Monday. When the day ends and my Parking Lot Pals come by to collect me, I have about ten more minutes of prep to do rearranging group formations of desks and putting piles of paper where they belong on my own desk, so I release my Parking Lot Pals to their weekend lives and continue moving furniture around.
This is where I should say that after ten minutes, I pack up and leave for the weekend. I should say this. This, however, is far from the truth.
My cohort and I decide to finish the data. We are more than halfway through. Besides, it frees up time next week if we finish this here, now, today. The thought of picking it up mid-calculations next week will only give both of us agida over the weekend. So, I sit my fat ass back down in a student desk and finish the damn data.
Once the data is done, we need to make copies. If we make copies, we can actually return all of the random worksheets to whom they belong and get this minutiae permanently off of our plates. It is a maximum of fifteen more minutes. I'm in; she's in; we are all in. All we need are five copies of each data set. Five. This is very simple math. Five plus the original set equals six copies. 5+1=6.
I make my five copies of my data. She makes her five copies of her data. We return to the room with six copies of the data in our hands. We each take one set of the data and put it into our own data files, which means that we are down to four copies. 6-2=4. Then, we attach one copy of the data to the original Scantron sheets, which means we are down to three copies, right? 4-1=3.So far, the math is flawless. We run the original papers down to the mailboxes. But wait. The door is locked. Actually two of the four access doors are locked. This leaves us two options: Go all the way around and hope the far door in the connecting school is open, or run the gauntlet past a few stragglers in another office. This is a great idea except that if any single one of the stragglers should see us and ask us a question, we will be obligated to engage in a very long conversation for which we do not have the time.
We carefully open the door, casually sneak past the open doors of the people working at their desks in their offices, then run as fast as we can. I, of course, am faster because, although I am the Wimpy Dumpy One, my legs are far longer and faster than the legs of the Mighty Tiny One. I reach the far brick wall and hide behind it like a secret agent from Mission Impossible, playing the theme song in my head as I go.
Success! The mailboxes are filled, and we sneak back through one of the locked doors (because we can access them from the inside), jaunt down the hallway, and giggle at our success.
We have three folders left for three WIP (Wicked Important People) who need this data. I have three copies of my data. I put one into each folder. Yay! I'm done! I can finally go home! I ask my cohort for her three copies. She produces two.
Two. Not three. Holy Hell, we fucked up our math! We spend fifteen minutes checking and rechecking everything. We count and recount. I look through my stuff; she looks through hers. We check the copy machine. We check every corner of her room and of mine. Nowhere can we find the last set of papers that we are quite certain, without a shadow of a doubt, that we copied.
Oh, shit. What if we accidentally put them in the mailboxes?
Down we go again. My cohort and I have to make a second pass through the Offices of Possible Blab, running the gauntlet without being shanghaied into a conversation for which we've no time. I assume we are going to do this together as she swings the door wide open.
No. She lets me go first and hesitates. Clearly if anyone is being shanghaied, she will blast past to freedom and leave me to sail off on some unknown ship to my doom.
Damnit.
Once I realize she has put me out as bait, I give a quick glance behind me and run. I not only run, I book it. The cameras inside the office hallway will attest to that should anyone review the footage on Monday. I wait at my hiding spot behind the brick wall until Mighty Tiny One turns the corner, her feet scuttling as fast as they can, her hair sailing behind her.
We check the mailboxes. Nope. The extra copy of papers is not there. It's not anywhere.
This time, we take a different way back, straight through the main office, stopping to steal chocolate from the candy jar the secretary left behind. We earned it. Then, we go back to the copy room and make another set of the papers. Now, we have seven copies with one in absentia.
Finally, all we have to do is fill the last of the folders with her three copies and go home. We put the copies into the folders, put the folders aside, and close our own binders. It's starting to get dark out as the weather changes, and it seems like it is much later than it actually is. I am suddenly exhausted and quite ready to start my weekend.
We stay too late, we laugh too long, and we have way too much fun on our recon mission to the mailboxes. However, the work is done. Well, it's 67% done. The stuff we have today is done, and that's all that matters. Oh, and we get chocolate. That's important, too.
