Keep Your Hands on Your Stick!!

Question

Ok, because I love all of you, my fake-named pals, I want to put out a nice public service announcement.

BACK UP YOUR STINKIN' APPLICATION CRAP! DO IT! NOW!

So UNC was due today and all I needed to do was make one last sweep of edits to my essays. I got up early before work to do it. Did the essays. Took an hour. Had to get to a meeting, so grabbed my flash drive, put it in my pocket, and off I went. 3 hours, 2 meetings, and a trip to the vet later, the thing is GONE! GONE!

Luckily, I back up my staff to my laptop at least once a day. But it did suck to lose that hour and have to do it again and wahwahwah. Of course it happened on a deadline day.

Be nice to yourself. Back your stuff up regularly.

P.S. UNC is in. Cornell is done, awaiting last edit sweep.

PPS I've barely started the duke essays. I am a bad dog.

batchgmat · Answer

Wow, we have some of the same Rd 2 schools (Cornell, Duke).

I have Cornell *almost* done, my word count is still a bit high for both essays. At this point I would be satisfied with 460 for each.

I still have two Duke essays to do and still edit the other two. Wow, now I'm scared!

And oh yeah, I just backed up my flash drive again

Tajik4GMAT · Answer

Do you use any online essay editing services?

aaudetat · Answer

Nope, in spite of my typo-strewn posts, I am a good writer.

I had my supervisor (who is a grantwriter and therefore an excellent story teller and the queen of getting people to give her stuff) read most of them for content, tone, and "plot."

And a woman who works for me used to work in publishing, so she is looking at them once I'm done, mostly to check for consistency. You know, always writing out "three" instead of typing "3" and making sure I use two commas in a list of three items, blahblahblah.

Tajik4GMAT · Answer

Who do you think is a better reader, a person who has PHD in English or a person with PHD in Business or any other business related disciplines let' say?

rhyme · Answer

I'd pick the business person if english is their native tongue. Will have a stronger understanding of what you want to do, and their english skills are likely to be good. If they are from tajikistan or something, maybe not.

aaudetat · Answer

I'm gonna go English. They know how to write. It's what they studied. Yes, they could still be painfully verbose or something, but they know how to tell a story, to build a narrative that works and is grammatical. 

Business folks sometimes know how to write, but generally, they don't study business because they're good writers. English scholars do.

aaudetat · Answer

And I meant a native speaker who had probably studied English as in comparative literature or technical writing or something like that.

Not your ESL-type English PhD.

rhyme · Answer

hahahaah.

aaudetat · Answer

Good job on the flash back-up. 

I know I am a bit Pollyanna about this, but Cornell specifically says, "Applicants must respect the 400-word limits." If they don't say it, I have gone a bit over here and there. A bit. But since these guys are specific, I'm doing what they say.

Of course, I doubt they'll actually count them, but they might be able to eyeball it - I don't know.

My theory is that it's best not to provoke them if humanly possible. (though i just screwed that up myself - did you remember to send in the Duke supplemental materials checklist? I didn't. Doh.)

rhyme · Answer

I went over. Where did you see that statement?

Tajik4GMAT · Answer

No, it is my advanced comp proff.

aaudetat · Answer

I don't remember, but it's definitely there. And in more than one place. I copied and pasted it at the top of my draft to inspire the chopping.

Besides, I'm supposed to be workin' here. You go find it. We all know you've got the time now. And it will keep your mind off Kellogg and HBS.

aaudetat · Answer

Well, you could always get more than one person to read your essays. When it's hard to decide, don't! Do both.

Yeah, Rhyme, that's what you should do. Do 2 years at Kellogg and then head over to Chicago for 2 more. THat would be fun, dontcha think?

rhyme · Answer

It would. Expensive, but it would.

aaudetat · Answer

Thought I would let you all know that i found my stick yesterday morning - in a puddle in my yard. They don't float. I don't know if it will work, and don't care since I re-did what little I'd lost and had backed up the rest anyway.

I must be completely losing it. Yesterday I lost my laptop (long, stupid story), but was relieved that everything was backed up on my new flash drive, which was in my pocket. When I pulled the stick out, I also pulled out a magnet that one of my volunteers had given me. A fairly strong magnet. My supervisee says, "maybe you don't want to put your flash in your pocket with a magnet." 

OHMIGOD!!!!

Stick turned out to be ok, found the laptop. But really, I'm a wreck. Ridiculous.

Keep Your Hands on Your Stick!!

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