Planning Makes Perfect!?!

Back in Lancaster University where I did my PhD, there was an old professor who had the following sign outside his door:

"A lack of planning on your part does not constitute an emergency on my part!"

This piece of fundamentally sound wisdom has always guided my own dealings with time and deadlines. If you want to get things done on time, make sure that you plan well ahead. Don't do things at the last minute. Plan for every eventuality. Make sure you have enough toner or ink in your printer. Make sure your presentation slides work perfectly. Make sure your laptop is compatible with the projector at the venue you are teaching at. Make sure you know where your meeting is taking place before you set off, etc etc etc.

Basically, use the brains God gave you and think ahead!!

But if I had a ten ringgit note for every one of my students who heed this advice, I think I would be a very poor man indeed. I might just have enough money to eat one meal a day. Let me tell you why...

I have been teaching for some years now, and this lack of forethought on the part of my young charges never fails to raise my blood temperature. And it's not just a Malaysian thing - I have taught in other countries such as Poland and the UK, and have found the same thing happening time and time again.

Here is how it usually plays out in my context. Many of the classes I teach require the students to do some presentations. Because we are in the 21st Century now, that means using a laptop PC connected to an LCD projector, running Microsoft PowerPoint. Our students are absolute wizards with PowerPoint - they can make it sing and dance with stunning and breathtaking graphical backgrounds and sound effects downloaded from mysterious places on the Internet, highly original photos plagiarised from various websites, and of course Macromedia Flash animations and amusing little YouTube videos that have me laughing like a drain for days and days after seeing them...

I really wish I had the time and the talent for such technological prowess, but I don't. Instead, I am condemned to sit through the scenarios that arise when the creators of such marvels fail utterly to plan ahead. Here are the most common planning failures which result in class presentations taking much more time than they should:

1. The presentation group walk up to the computer, plug their thumb drive in, and find that their version of the software doesn't work with the version on the PC in the classroom. And they have, being such tech mages, used the very latest version of the software to create their presentations without saving the file in a backwardly-compatible format!

2. The group walk up to the computer, plug their thumb drive in, and find, after several minutes of feverish head movements and pulling of hair, that their file has a malicious virus which makes it totally impossible to run on the computer. And of course, they didn't check the file for viruses before they came to class....

3. One of the group comes up and informs you that they have brought the wrong file/thumb drive/CD/laptop with them. "Sir, can I go back to my room and get it?"

4. The group start to load the file from their thumb drive, only to find out that for some reason, the fancy graphics in their presentation do not work on the PC in the classroom. Hence they will ask to swap the classroom PC with their laptop, which takes at least ten minutes to carry out...

5. The group starts to present, and it becomes obvious that they are going to carry on for at least another hour, even though you have given them 15 minutes.

6. They forget to check the spelling and grammar on their slides, or ask me to do it.

7. They forget all the advice and training I gave them about maintaining eye contact, not reading from the slides, using screwed up colour combinations for slides, etc (not strictly a planning error but equally irritating!).

What can we do about this? I must say don't have a clue. But I can offer the following advice:

1. Rehearse your talk so that you know how much time you're going to take
2. Check that your file is compatible with earlier software versions than yours
3. Don't use too many fancy graphics and multimedia features. You do not get extra marks for PowerPoint wizardry. Keep it Short and Simple (KISS).
4. Check your spelling and grammar before the talk. Ask your lecturer. That's what he or she gets paid for!
5. Back up your work on two thumb drives, a CD and even email a copy of it to yourself. You never know what can happen!
6. Check your file for viruses.
7. Basically, be careful, have pride in what you do and most of all PLAN AHEAD!!

Now, let's see if I can increase the number of ten ringgit notes I can collect now.......