(I was never as rebellious as Spicoli, but have I become Mr. Hand?)
My mom had a friend she worked with on various projects over the years who was always late, usually by a half hour or more. This irritated my mother to no end, as she’s a “I need to be 10 minutes early” person and her friend had no sense of why being late was such a bother.
At one point, the friend asked, “What’s the big deal? Why are you so upset about me being late?” My mom’s answer was a great one:
“When you are late, you are telling me that you value your time more than mine,” Mom said. “If you value our time equally, then you’ll be here on time. In making our plans, you’ve asked me to set aside time for you and this plan you value, time I could otherwise be doing something else that matters to me. Then, when you don’t show up on time, you tell me that the plan, the time and my efforts really don’t matter to you.”
I use this story to try to help students understand why it’s important to show up early, or at least on time, for interviews and meetings with sources. It would really work great, if half the classes I’m teaching these days weren’t too late in showing up to hear it.
The point of this post isn’t to complain about “kids these days” or generally just shout at a cloud, but to really ask a serious question of media practitioners out there:
“Do deadlines matter anymore in our field?”
The goal of every class I teach is to prepare students for what is coming at them when they take a job in the field. That means tighter writing, accuracy of content, fact checking and especially deadlines. In regard to that last one, I try to set fair and yet firm deadlines for their work to be done, which more and more students are having a harder and harder time of making.
Case in point, the intro writing class got a “quotes” assignment on Wednesday. The goal to interview anyone (I literally did not care whom they interviewed, so long as it wasn’t a pet. I let a kid do it once and there were only so many “Meow” quotes I could handle.) and then build about a page-long story based on that interview, relying on the paraphrase-quote pairings we discussed.
I used to set deadlines at noon, but students said that was “confusing” because the LLM system listed it as “12:00 PM” which they took to mean at night. (I’m amazed, but not surprised…) This time, I listed it at “11:30 AM” as I’m assuming in most parts of the country, “AM” means “morning” (although AP style would call it a.m.).
Out of 40 students, 20 made the deadline. Another eight emailed me after the drop box locked at 7 p.m. and they were befuddled by their inability to turn something in.
The syllabus notes that no late assignments will be tolerated, but I decided to take the late ones from the kids who at least emailed. Still, that’s 28/40, a phenomenal team winning percentage in the MLB, about 20 points higher than Shaq’s free-throw percentage in the NBA and ridiculous for making a deadline in my mind.
Deadline used to be the driver of everything we did in media. I still remember once was working night desk when the story about a kid “clinging to life” became a story of “a kid died.” After I got off the phone with the hospital, my editor came over to my desk, looked at my notes and said, “Oh shit… You have to rewrite Brenda’s story. You have four minutes.”
I thought it was metaphor or hyperbole, but as I was cramming chips into my mouth and scrolling slowly through the story, he returned.
“What the hell are you doing?” he asked. “You have 3 minutes and 30 seconds. The presses are heating up!”
One whirling dervish later, the story was functionally beaten into shape, but I never forgot that four minutes meant four damned minutes.
Even now, deadlines matter to me. I have a giant post-it on the wall for every book I do, reminding me of what has been sent and what needs to go. I was never more embarrassed than the time I missed a deadline because of a misunderstanding between me and my new editor.
I owed four chapters per deadline period, the first of which she said was going to be September. In all my previous interactions with Sage, I got a specific date or just had it due by the end of the month. Right around Labor Day, I got a “Hey, just checking in to see how this is going” email, to which I said things were find and I was about halfway done.
A couple days later, I got another, “Just seeing how you are doing in getting the chapters done” email. Perplexed again, I responded that I was fine, so relax and let me work.
That next week, I got the, “You are past deadline, so we’re kind of concerned we haven’t seen anything yet,” email, which put me on my heels. I tore through all my notes and then immediately called the editor:
Me: My deadline is September. It’s still September. I should have like 17 days left before I’m “late” for anything.
Her: It was due Sept. 1. That’s what I told you.
Me: Um, no, I’ve got everything here and you said, “September” so why would I assume I didn’t have September to work on it.
Her: I always work off the first of any month. That’s always been Sage’s policy.
I was mortified and negotiated another week from her, only to turn the last of the stuff around in four days. When I sent the email with the chapters and an apology for being about 16 days late, she sent me back a reassuring email with this note:
“Don’t worry. Some authors are more than two years past their deadlines…”
How in the hell is that possible, I wondered, only to find out from another friend at Sage that some folks are more than half a decade behind in their deadline pursuit.
Five years?
That’s the gap between birth and kindergarten, the amount of time a four-year degree takes to complete or the length of the worst NFL contract of all time. And the people blowing off a book deadline are likely the same people who are likely to refuse to accept late work from students…
Getting back to the original point, I know that a lot of things change over time in the field in which I teach. We no longer teach “counting beats” to measure headlines or require a pica pole in design classes. We also don’t teach people how to “cut tape” for broadcast, whether that was physically razor-blading something or cutting from Hi-8 tape to Hi-8 tape.
Is deadline one of those things now where being punctual doesn’t matter as much, because we don’t have to worry about press costs? (I imagine television news still has some significant issues if people are blowing stuff off, but I could be wrong.)
Is holding firm on a deadline important to teach a valuable lesson or is it like reminding students to set their clocks back for daylight saving time, a quaint reminder of a generation gap that emphasizes something no longer necessary?
Tell me what you think in general, not accounting for real excuses like last-minute surgery, car accidents or family crises. Those I already have carve outs for. I’m talking about the general and perpetual land of “Oh… Yeah… Can I, like, still turn that in?” situations, where students view deadlines as being as flexible as Silly Putty.
Pros (and profs if you’re interested in chiming in), the phone lines are open and your call is very important to us… Operators are standing by, so tell me what you think.
