This week, I committed an act of gross stupidity; for months, in fact, I have been grossly stupid and this walloped me in the face on Thursday 10th November 2011. A day I ought never to forget. For, on this day, my 8 gigbyte USB drive disentegrated before my very eyes and along with it, access to my teaching life.
This USB drive is (or was, may she rest in peace) a rather precious thing, for contained within it is almost all that I have done as a teacher over the past 9 years. Teaching resources for Yr 7, 8 and 9 across a broad range of ability levels; GCSE resources for old and new GCSEs and all that I have produced for my A level subjects and whole lot else besides. For something so precious to my working life, why, oh why oh why had I not backed it up for the past few months?? I write 'few months' in an effort to make it less grossly stupid but in fact it is far more likely that it had been a year since I had backed up 'my precious'. That is clearly act of gross stupidity #1, it cannot be argued otherwise.
I had been using 'my precious' in my A Level Media Studies lesson that afternoon (a lovely bunch of kids with a robust and healthy sense of humour, with a love of Jaffa Cake bars it turns out) which is taught in the specially designated 6th Form block of my school. It is decent trudge from my English department to there; and it is usually a happy journey. At the end of the lesson I'd packed away everything tidily but my addled brain concluded that it would be fine to leave the USB drive plugged into the laptop as I trudged from one venue to the next. The addled brain was very, very wrong so this is obviously act of gross stupidity #2.
Having lugged me and my plantar facciatus feet which gives me a rather fetching 'Igor' like gait, my laptop (with the USB drive plugged in) and my carrier bag of resources back to the English office I sat down and noticed something very much awry with 'my precious'. The casing was loose and the USB port was also working itself lose from the data stick itself. The addled brain then made another poor decision. The addled brain took out the USB drive before I'd checked if the laptop was still reading it which would have allowed me to copy the data. But no, the addled brain decided to take out the poorly USB drive and inspect it's state. It's state worsened considerably as the USB port detached itself from the data stick entirely, rendering the data, 9 years of my teaching life, totally inaccesible. So, this is clearly act of gross stupidity #3.
I stared at the disabled USB drive in horror. My brain did not want to compute what it could see whilst admonishing me for those previous acts of gross stupidity. Fool.
What was I to do?? I had to eat humble pie and walk into the IT tech support office, that is what I had to do. I walked in breathless and a bit queasy doing my best to suppress the total panic lurking underneath the surface, held my broken 'precious' up to one of the men and said, 'I know this is not your job but look at how stupid I've been? Can you help me? Can you get the data onto something and then I'll bin it I promise. I'll buy you whatever kind of beer you want. It has ALL my teaching resources on there. I am SO stupid.'
The man looked upon me sympathetically, gave me a flustered but helpful response along the lines of 'Leave it with me.' and I walked away and left 'my precious' in his (capable, oh GOD please let them be capable) hands.
We had a parent's evening that night so I was going nowhere and the addled brain knew it. The addled brain went from making bad decisions to taking on a bit of mental self-flagelation, berating me for my own stupidity, and why wouldn't it? I felt nausous with worry. What exactly would I do if the data could not be retrieved? WHAT would I do? Something kept a lid on an impending panic attack knowing that parent's evening was looming.
The evening came and went but the nausea most certainly didn't and it didn't leave me until I arrived at school the next morning.
I came into school the next day after having not slept terribly well. The addled brain was still enjoyed the self-flagelation and did not relent all night. I busied myself with my normal morning routine, filling the kettle to make my morning cuppa, sorting resources for the A-Level lesson that morning and in wondered the IT man who listened to my deperate plea the day before. He produced the broken and battered device accompanied by a shiny DVD rom of all my data rescued from the poorly 'precious'. I squealed with delight and very nearly hugged his ankles and may have told him he was, 'My hero' which I think made him blush a little.
That morning I showed the A level kids my broken 'precious' and their look of horror showed they understood the previous day's dilemma.
'Never mind Hamlet today people' I said to them, 'NEVER be as stupid as me.'
