Deadlines.

Deadlines. We all have them. We all hate them. We stress over them, lose sleep over them and say goodbye to a social life over them. Unless of course, you are one of my university lecturers. When they set students a deadline, boy do they mean it! When the clock strikes 5pm, the portal closes. No submissions, no grade, fail. And yet when they set themselves deadlines, for example, for the marking and return of dissertation proposals (n.b. rather important), they evade deadlines like the plague, or, more topically, like swine flu. "We haven't quite finished them yet", "We're working on it", "Results will be out this Friday/next Monday/the middle of next week", and most recently, "We're hoping to have them finished by the end of exams". Thanks, only two months late then.

The whole point of a deadline is that it is a dead line, a straight forward cut-off point that is not expandable, not subjective, and not sometime around this month, but maybe not, it depends how we feel. If we could enforce their deadlines as they do ours, the entire department would fail miserably.

So, if deadlines are the bane of your working life then maybe it's time for a career change. Become a lecturer, sit back and relax in what is strictly a deadline-free zone.