Wrong Script!

Today I had a drama performance for English. The task was to perform a monologue from the perspective of a character in Macbeth. The monologue was written in modern day english and was to fill in a missing scene in the play. The task was of course more complex than that but that is the short of it.

Now this is not a tale of glory by any means, this is a cautionary tale to all who, like me, leave things to the last minute and, like me, over-rely on computers to think for them.

I wrote a draft a week ago, but it wasn't until Sunday night that I wrote the final copy. My performance was potentially going to be on Monday so this was a dumb idea, but I left it that late anyway. I was very tired when I finished so I read it out into a recording and then listened to the mp3 while I slept. 87 times in fact and I didn't memorize a single word.

When I woke up on Monday morning I had to print out a copy of my final copy. Unfortunately the LAN wasn't working. So I grabbed a USB drive, put the final version on the USB drive, walked to the other computer, inserted th USB drive, opened Explorer and went to the Wireless Access folder and printed out the draft.

I then walked around with the draft printed for two days while the final copy lay virtually on the USB drive I was carrying in my pocket the whole time.
I had to perform this afternoon, I got the stage ready and after a laughing fit finally managed to start. Now the tricky thing is the first paragraph of my script is identical in the draft and the final, so it wasn't until the second paragraph that I realised I had the wrong script.

I paced up and down silently for half a minute, realising just how screwed I had become. I finally ad libbed two paragraphs before managing to choke out enough of what I thought was the final copy while using the draft as a guide. I still had not memorised it though that wouldn't have done me any good anyway as I would have memorised the wrong one.

I did eventually get through the performance but needless to say I did very badly. I think I passed, but did badly.

Now this could have been avoided if I had done my final draft earlier and given myself time to memorise it earlier. It could have been avoided if I had checked that I printed out the correct document. It could have been avoided if the bloody wifi had been working, by which I mean I hadn't developed a habit to go to that folder whether the wifi was working or not. And really we could throw around ways I could have avoided the situation until the cows return from their duty re-enacting cliches, but the fact is I didn't avoid it, I stuffed up my performance and my results have suffered for it. Seeing as the result is as it is I don't see any point in wishing it another way, it was poor planning, it was bad luck, shit, as they say, happened.

So the moral of this story to anyone who faces assessment like this is to be prepared, make sure the work is done early and be sure to check all paperwork prior to leaving home.

And if you are a future employer looking at this to find fault in my ability so as to not hire me, then you will be disappointed to know that while this screen displays the entry field to this blog, the other screen has the start of my next assignment on it, so I am prepared.