Today I had a Coronary

I am a perpetual student...oops, I mean an academic, a scholar, a member of the intelligentsia...basically a perpetual student.

The skills of the student: writing a paper at the last minute, pulling all nighters to do the work you should have done months ago, putting everything you have to do off also until the last minute so you are working like crazy, drinking lots of coffee, typing really really fast.

I am a bit ocd, I am a fantastic planner, I took 2 years to write a dissertation and I planned it all out. But when it comes to writing 20 page papers that I am delivering for conferences, I am still that undergraduate student who said, "SHIT, it's due tomorrow, there's no more time." I have never taken an incomplete, I have never not handed in an assignment, I have never handed in an assignment late; I have always gotten it done at the last minute. And, unfortunately, it has always worked. So I continue to always do it.

Today I hopped on to pull together the paper I am presenting at the national meeting next week...a week from yesterday...at the national meeting. I go to crunch some numbers and I can't find my dataset. I spent 2 months back in January collecting data. It took 2 months, my data collection process is time consuming, and I could not find it. Two days ago (in search of the perfect apostraphe) I reorganized my computer. I deleted lots of stuff. Yesterday I decided I was so good at organizing that I could empty my recycle bin...which means it's really really gone. Today I cannot find my dataset. The sweat breaks out on my brow. I begin to panic. I feel my stomach drop to the bottom of my feet and I am instantly thinking of what the hell can I offer as a paper without any data.

Then I realized I mis-labeled it. It was there, data is crunched, interesting findings were found. I invested in box.net.