1. Tripping on the crack in the sidewalk (or worse, actually falling on your face) on your way to class.
Let’s set the scene with which we are all familiar. You are walking to your first class of the day, most likely at a reasonable hour, feeling great about yourself. Maybe you had a great night sleep, and you are really feeling like you can take on the day. Maybe you are looking completely fabulous because you actually did your hair or are wearing a new outfit. You’re favorite song is playing and then BAM, you stub your toe on a pertruding crack in the sidewalk trekking up East-West road. If you’re only slightly misfortunate and have some scrap of grace, you may limit yourself to a very noticeable trip, but for others it might result in a full faceplant on the asphalt. You quickly try to recover and pick up the pace, even though your pride and your toe are throbbing in pain, in an effort to distance yourself from anyone who saw. And as hard as you might try to lie to yourself, deep down you know there will always be someone who sees. You continue to class, surrendering to the powers of the universe that remind you not to get too cocky or too comfortable, and pull out your phone to ask this question:
2. Remembering an assignment had a midnight deadline at 12:05 am.
This is especially bad when you’ve been particularly productive all night, and you think you’ve finished everything. Proud of yourself for finishing by midnight and celebrating too soon, you decide to curl up with the latest House of Cards season to end the night. As the opening credits role, something about seeing Kevin Spacey’s name, reminds you that you aren’t as together as you think, and you completely forgot to do an assignment, or worse a quiz or test, and the deadline came and went while you were congratulating yourself on being organized and productive. Good try and better luck next time.
3. A mandatory class you need to take next semester is already filled up before your registration time
Let’s face it. Registration sucks. It’s a game of chance and it’s every person for themselves. You go into registration knowing, you won’t be getting every class, so you lower your expectations down to the bare minimum of “I need these classes or I am behind.” Now in a realistic mindset, you open up the class availability list and notice a core class has the dreaded “0” under the “Seats Available” column.Now you’ll be playing the odds on the waitlist hoping there might be some people dumb enough to drop a coveted spot in a required class. Your time is better spent freshening up your ability to fake passion for the subject and beg shamelessly for a spot via email to the professor. To those especially unlucky, you already envision yourself telling people “I’m a super-senior.”
4. Getting stuck with a bunch of slackers for a group assignment
We’ve all been here, but just because it’s a commonality doesn’t make it any less unlucky. Three weeks before the assignment is due, your professor assigns you into groups. If it’s later into the semester, you probably know immediately there’s a competency lacking amongst your group members. Trying not to doom yourself from the start or maybe it’s just trying to avoid the pain to come, you tell yourself, maybe these people, who have consistently been riding the curve and the coattails of others all semester, might surprise yourself. Well before you know it, we’re down to one week before the assignment is due and you don’t even have an email going about maybe discussing a plan of action for completing the group work. Facing reality, you send out the email, find a common time to meet. At your first meeting if they actually managed to show up, they certainly didn’t come with any ideas, rendering the time almost useless, and you end up dividing the work and assigning tasks for people to do. When they finally get their part up on Google Drive at 3:00am the night before it’s due, you spend the last moments before dawn, heavily editing and rewording everything they say.
And what was originally supposed to be a lesson in working well with others reveals a more honest and important lesson: Trust no one. You will get screwed.
5. Having the Wi-Fi go out in the middle of a test and/or while working on an important paper
The fact that you’ve procrastinated making a temporary loss in internet access a major setback to completing a test or paper on time is irrelevant. The point is, when you need it most, the internet will fail you. Sure you could’ve started the test or paper yesterday, or even a few hours ago, but you waited until 10 pm with a 12:00 am deadline quickly approaching to even open up a word document or Laulima tab, and that’s okay because sometimes naps and food are more important. However, now as you see a “Page unable to load” or “Network Connectivity Problems” tab staring right back at you, you start to rethink your choices. Maybe you should put yourself to blame, but instead we’ll put the blame on Lady Luck for disappearing in your time of need.