One of those horrendous moments when you become alerted to the fact that something you have handed in, for your finals, might just not be the right version !!!!!
After last weeks debacle of getting my FMP document actually printed and bound I have reverted to getting things done in advance again. I’m not keen on it though.
In my first year I would get any project done asap and get it printed, bound and ready for submission sometimes weeks in advance of the due date. This allowed a full proof read and also highlighted any printing issues, which though rare, could be annoying yet easily rectified. Secondly and more importantly I would start re-reading the document and then wanting to add or amend text and images which I felt were out of place or indeed missing and required. This led to at least two documents being re-printed which was just a waste of money after trying to be efficient. I therefore decided to get all future documents printed the day before submission dates. I also decided to quickly check printing and not to nervously re-read the entire document several times as I had before.
This philosophy has worked well and allowed last minute editing that has been beneficial on more than one occasion. It does however potentially raise what may have happened to me last week.
Today I went to get my final document for Uni’ printed early again. Why? do you ask.
Last weeks debacle of getting my FMP printed kept me busy for almost two days and after further binding issues meant I submitted my work with less than 15 minutes before the office closed. The whole process nearly saw me explode when I had to leave the printers, with less than an hour to submission, to have prints re-printed being to an error by the young lady serving me. When the ‘finished’ document was handed to me it was almost like some horrendous game show where if you were late on delivering your life was over. This whole episode however left me in no doubt that if the printers are having issues, they are having issues, nothing they can do about it and that can leave things just too close for comfort. As for the human error over the binding and inclusion of images that, I fully accept, is just one of those things.
So to todays potential issue which almost saw me collapse when it dawned on me what it could mean.
Popped to the printers all sprightly in the lovely morning sunshine, handed over my USB, told them the file to print and sat down. A few moments later the printer starts and I have a smile on my face as, typically, the printers are in full working order today as they probably would be on Friday, hand in day.
Anyway the printer kept printing which I thought odd as this document isn’t too big so I jokingly piped up about only needing one copy. The reply, “….it’s a huge document” was odd and so I queried it. She showed me the front page and it was my FMP !!!! After a few seconds the printing was stopped and we ascertained she had inadvertently selected the wrong document on the USB, my FMP which was still there from last week.
She dumped all the wrongly printed material onto the counter and for some reason I thumbed through the first couple of pages. As I did this I noticed one of the pages was incorrect and missing some obvious text, oh bugger, another printing error so I mentioned it. Her reply was haunting and along the lines of “No thats’ correct” and turned her screen. My heart missed a beat as I recognised this as a working draft and not the final edit for print. Asking for my pen USB back I stated I would return after checking something. Totally stressing out I drove home and upon checking the file on the USB to those in my PC found to my horror it was in fact a working draft, though almost complete.
How did this happen I now hear people ask?
Since receiving advice at Uni I have always developed my documents and as such have 3 versions.
Version 1 is simply the roughest of copies filled with inserts notes and guidance (deleted once V.2 almost completed)
Version 2 is the working copy that develops to the final print copy.
Version 3 is the final print copy after checking of the bibliography, headings, image selection, any final text editing and a run through plagiarism software. I always keep version 2 in case I make an error in version 3 or indeed manage to lose formatting etc whilst polishing things off.
Somehow it seems I have potentially saved V.2 to my USB and not V.3. I know this might be a complete panic for nothing though I can’t see where V.3 would have gone from my USB unless it went during last weeks printing. This could be something of a calamity for my marking score as there are some editorial differences between versions and a couple of images missing which were late additions to one of the content headings. It could also be a complete panic over nothing but the seed is now sown.
The fact that I never had time to even skip through the document last week is now worrying me. I’m pretty confident everything is correctly credited in the bibliography even though there are some considerable text changes in the first half of the document and with only a few images missing things should be safe. Reading V.2 is disjointed at times though this will probably put down to my grasp on the English language (paragraphs) and failure to polish up the text correctly. This will however worry me until I receive the module mark in a few weeks.
So potentially my tutor doesn’t have the correct version of my FMP, though I hope he does, and potentially this could affect my mark.
As this is my second to last document for my degree I don’t think changing processes now will help, yet I will certainly be more aware of what I’m clicking to save things in Word.
Interesting on Google with people asking if there is any way to recover a document when they have saved something wrongly in word etc. Oh the potential calamities ‘Save’ and ‘Save As’ could, and it would seem do, create.
On a more pleasant note, in my next blog post, I’ll post the images submitted for todays, yet to be printed, presentation module.
Chill Paul, Chill.