The Great Crashout

Oh no. Oh no no no no-

This could not be happening. 

I stared at my screen with growing horror, finger jabbing at the refresh button. Snippets of the conversation I had with my professor trickled back into my memory, her voice floating in my ears. “I’m so sick of students sending me corrupt files.” The image of her face, with an exasperated smile and an almost disbelieving look in her eyes, appeared in front of me. That part of our conversation kept looping in my head as the bright Canvas screen and the words “Document still processing, please try later” mocked me.

As an overthinker, it took less than a second for my brain to come to the only logical conclusion—my professor would think I was one of those kids who deliberately attached corrupt files to buy time instead of asking politely—or worse, instead of actually doing their work. 

This wouldn’t do.

I looked at the clock. I had thirty minutes or so between 11:59 p.m. and absolute shame. Okay, thirty minutes is a lot, right? I could definitely fix this. Well, if the main submissions page was refusing my assignment like a petulant child refusing medicine, I’d simply attach it in the comments! 

And that’s what I did. I only spent five minutes. That should have been the end of it, but how would I be writing this story if it were? When I rechecked the document attached in the comments, it led me to the basement instead of the darn penthouse. My sloppy drafts, with sentences that did not even make sense, sat there looking up at me through the screen.

The earth could crack open and swallow me whole, and I’d say thank you. 

“Yeah, these kids—I try to be understanding, but corrupt files? Wrong files? Seriously?”

I did NOT need my cool and chill professor to see me as a student who attached corrupt files on purpose, which was clearly one of her pet peeves. I still had twenty-odd minutes left. I checked why it was leading me to my drafts and figured that it was because I’d forgotten to convert it to a Word file. Easy enough to rectify, right? WRONG. My laptop decided it would be fun to hide the Word copies and make it inaccessible to me until I had to create a new one, copy and paste the writing, and save it to OneDrive. Even then, it wouldn’t stop its treacherous ways, refusing to be selected.

But I managed to do it, somehow. We had only two attempts, so I quickly clicked on ‘New Attempt’ and uploaded my assignment, then clicked ‘Submit’, catching a glimpse of my thousand-yard stare in the mirror as the confetti poured down on the screen.

And that should have been the end. Right? It couldn’t get worse, definitely.

“Document still processing. Please try—”

I’m sure my neighbours heard my staccato scream. If they knew why, they’d probably understand. But here I was, in a loose tank top, god awful glasses for the glare, and corrupt files uploaded instead of my 2000-word critique on a song and its political implications. 

I barely had ten minutes. As I worked frantically, I felt like Lady Macbeth, haunted, agonised even, by the corrupt files; desperately wanting to be on the good side of my professor. First, I uploaded it to the comment section, along with a neat little explanation. Okay, five minutes to spare, I should be fine, right? 

But, of course, I would not be okay with just that. I opened up my email—the start page was taking forever to load, as if sensing my urgency—and found my professor’s email. 

I had two minutes left by the time I hit send, the time crunch too great to triple-check. As I breathed out gently, shutting my laptop with a quiet, soft noise, I texted my friends to debrief. After a short discussion, we came to the conclusion that I’d probably send her a carrier pigeon if I could. 

I don’t know what my marks are yet, but I did get a reply. Thankfully, I have not dishonoured my name, and I remain her most diligent student (I think). But the entire fiasco with Canvas made me 1) solidify my hate for tech; 2) nostalgic for that one class where we had to handwrite our assignments and slip them under the professor’s office door. Oh well, I suppose that’s a story for another time. 

PS: Thank you to my good friend Murali Krishnan A for suggesting I write about this experience!

• academics
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