Wednesday, April 22, 2020
A little while back, I was asked to host a job candidate, and as part of the process, was asked to enter in scheduling details to a spreadsheet set up by the department support staff. I go to the spreadsheet, see that it has another name entered-in, reason that it must be a template of some kind, and proceed to fill in the name of the visitor and his appointment information. Little do I suspect, I was overwriting someone else's schedule! What I overlooked was the name tabs at the bottom of the spreadsheet, one of which would have taken me to a sheet for my particular candidate. Fortunately, backup files existed, and my overwrite was corrected.
How did this happen?
Part of it perhaps comes down to the fact that I just think a little differently than many other people -- probably most other people wouldn't naturally think that the spreadsheet was a template; or an old copy. Had I paid closer attention, I would have noticed that the candidate I was overwriting, had not yet arrived; so it could not have been a template. I also didn't see those tabs at the bottom, as I mentioned. And part of the reason for *that* is that I don't naturally start looking for tabs, and don't look at the bottom of the sreen, first. (In fact, I rarely ever use a spreadsheet at all, have *never* used tabs, nor have I previously used different fonts and colors in spreadsheets, or any of the other embelishments most people seem to know about.) Having been subjected to a near constant blast of advertisements on the internet, I have acquired a kind of "tunnel vision", where I only focus on content near the middle of the screen -- ads and other traps are off to the sides, and to the top and bottom of the page, usually.
I'm sure somewhere, buried in the instructions I had to follow, or perhaps some email sent out earlier in the semester, they mentioned how to fill in the form in more detail. Well, that's another problem: I get *so* many emails, and they are sent out so far in advance, that by the time I have to follow their advice, I have forgotten what they said!
I'm sure it must be amusing to the computer support people to hear stories like mine. I used to work as computer support guy, too; and was amused, for example, by all the stupid things that professors did when interacting with technology -- though, they had less of an excuse at the time, as they didn't get sandblasted with emails and advertisements. (One guy I remember was an economics professor with an unhealthy obsession about "I.Q." and the writings of Charles Murray. He probably considered himself "smart", but always seemed to need advice on how to use his computer.)
Professors, however, work in a different world from how it seems to computer support staff. The things we have to pay attention to are different; and remembering how to, for example, edit a seminar announcement is far, far down the list of things we need to know how to do in order to fulfill our jobs. And that email sent around at the beginning of the semester, telling us about the website upgrades, will also be forgotten. In fact, we'll get so many emails like that, that it might not even be easy to find it using the email search feature ("who was it that sent that email?"; "what's a good search term I can enter to find it?"). Those of us who manage to do it better than others are probably a little more neurotic about checking emails and keeping up with every single announcement; and if that's *most* of the department, it's more a reflection that academics are just more neurotic and organized than the average human being, than it is that they are being mindful to an expected degree.