your file and will do again for this project?”
“I could probably tell you it all.”
“Can you, what do you think you do with your time?”
“I know exactly.”
“Do you know how much time you actually spent in the library compared to how much time you spent in the bathroom?”
“Yes.”
She told the exact hours and we both looked at each other rather sheepishly.
“You’ve been using the university computer to do that?”
“I don’t really expect you to understand…I’ve looked at the data… what I recorded myself on your form… a bit of paper… I went to my lectures or most of them…not like I did anything wrong…”
“Do you think you’ll ever achieve anything with your attitude?”
“I don’t see why not, I study, I attend lectures, another few years and I’ll have my degree. Then, I won't be at university anymore and I’ll see. I don’t need a ticking off.”
“Alright then, we’ll co-operate than shall we?”
“I actually expect co-operation, I don’t care if you know I watch TV all morning, if I have terrestrial channels or cable or satellite, what I watch on TV if you can work that out, what time I go to bed, how many days I go out a week, what time I get up at weekends. But I came here to learn.”
“You’re getting quite carried away with yourself little lady.”
“That’s like my life I was telling you about, what I want from you is advice, which was why I did it, I don’t expect criticism.”
“All right then, can you remember what you read at the start of the week?”
She seemed uncomfortable.
“You only read novels at weekends when you see all your friends, could you tell me why that is?”
“Are you saying I watch too much TV and only see my friends at weekends?”
“I’m not going to get into silly arguments about watching the TV.”
The girl seemed to be sulking and muttered something under her breadth that the tutor perfectly understood though it was hard to imagine how he could have heard what she said.
“What you do here is no concern of mine…”
“I’ve passed my exams and attended lectures. What good are stats that say anything else? That proves my point that they only measure things and don’t give the real me, that don’t say I have a future ahead of me because I’m young and had worked towards it, by coming here of course. Also, I’m going to walk out of here and have a good life and a career, be way ahead of anyone else I met at school who didn’t go to university and even if so many go now. Who cares? All I wanted was a bit of advice….”
“Let us look at the data.”
“How many friends do I have?”
“I’ll ask the questions.”
“No you won’t. What days do I go out?”
The tutor tried to find it in her notes.
“See you don’t even know.”
“I have that somewhere here.”
“Don’t look on your computer.”
“Perhaps if you come back next week…”
“I want advice now, not in a week’s time.”
“What advice do you think I can give you?”
She began to walk out and then staying said, “You’re my tutor, of course you can give advice. You can because you have the solution, that’s why.”
“Alright, if you want solutions, then here are some. What time do you write your essays, what time do get up in the mornings, how many times do you wake up late because you have a hangover?”
But she had walked out.
Having written my diaries up finally, I designed an application using other software on my computer and pasted in each day’s diary entry into my computer. Underneath I typed in the things I had mentioned for that day. When I spoke about a novel I had read, I typed it in below the diary entry that appeared on the screen and moved onto the next one. Here I might type study or some topic of interest I had mentioned such as computers. Not all were directly the same the things. I wondered if I wouldn’t find that for each day, I did mention exactly what I did that day or more or less. So I wasn’t wasting my time if my personal journal was not the same as my time management data. To my surprise, I found the reverse of what I had thought. This was comparing the data from the form I had recorded my time use in hours with my personal journal. It said that when I did something, I mentioned it less week to week and when I mentioned something in my diary more I did it less.
“Doers are not thinkers.”
The End
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