This semester my plan is to stay ahead of the work, getting the things I can do early done early. The concept behind this is to give me more time with the dreaded web design class whose homework seems to take me several hours longer than the typical student. So last weekend I wrote a paper for another of my three classes. Six pages, single spaced (single spaced is a lot of words on each page!) with a bibliography and footnotes. A lot of work, it looked at several job postings, combined with the American Library Association’s document of competencies required of librarians, and folded all that into information from four current journal articles that discussed issues surrounding the work of people in the field.
The paper isn’t due until tomorrow, and it’s been done for several days, so I felt happy when others in that class mentioned they were still working on it. Imagine my angst when tonight, as I tried pull the paper up again on my computer for a last leisurely look before sending it off via an electronic submission system, and I couldn’t locate it in my files! I spent a frantic thirty minutes searching in all the places I thought it could have been saved, but no luck. I started firing off emails to anyone I thought might be able to give me some help finding it. And then I began the arduous task of starting the paper over. After all I had over twelve hours before it was due! But I couldn’t concentrate. That paper had been good! I knew I couldn’t recreate it.
When the phone rang I was somewhat cranky, having only finished paragraph one. But it was one of my friends responding to the disjointed email. A few suggestions later I “found” the paper! Such relief! And here’s where the idiocy comes in. The paper was saved in the right location. It’s just that I didn’t recognize the title because the title format had been prescribed in our assignment rather than being something I labeled.
The paper had been right there before my eyes, disguised as something unfamiliar. I have learned this lesson before, to be more curious, to poke around more. It’s a skill I am trying to develop because it will help with web design. But in my panic I couldn’t see the paper for the file.
Change Is Hard 
January 17, 2008 at 7:02 am
Pretty interesting how that happened. The digital version of having your glasses pushed up on your head and searching like crazy for them (or the pencil that is tucked behind your ear).
I realize that post-facto advice isn’t always helpful, but I’m going to share it anyway…
If you think about files as things without names you’re forced to consider their other properties. For example, every file has a size as well as various dates associated with it. Every file knows when it was created and when it was last modified (this is key). In Windows there is a view in file explorer where things are ordered in a list with details in columns (detail view I believe). This affords you the ability to order them ascending or descending by column. So, if you sort things by last modified date, things you were working on most recently will appear at the top of the list…and the name of things become secondary. You might then look at the file type because you know you’re looking for a *.doc or whatever.
This same approach is useful when looking for large files (sort by size) or looking for files of specific types (sort by type, *.html, *.jpg, *.css) in a directory that might be littered with dozens or hundreds of files.
Perhaps you already understand how detail view in file explorer works, but including and using that knowledge as part of your search strategy might be a new idea to add to your search toolbox.
You are like a little bird growing it’s digital wings…yer makin’ me so proud!
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January 17, 2008 at 8:47 am
🙂
but not flying just yet!
Thanks for the information. I think I’ll go look something up right now!
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