photo by dogwelder

There are a tremendous number of things in this world which irritate and annoy me. At one time, I wanted to create a blog dedicated to this list of pet peeves, which I was going to call itssofuckingannoying.com. I never ended up doing that because when I tried to think of all these things in one sitting, I realized none came to mind. So, now I am going to try to do this life’s mission of mine one ISFA or Pet Peeve at a time. Since this one happened to me the other night, it gets the honor of being #1:

I’m calling it Due at midnight. You see, many professors make assignments and say something like, “it’s due on Monday at midnight.” In class on Monday, I asked what I think is a sensible question (I’ve had to ask this many times before with other instructors) which was, “So, you mean 11:59pm on Monday, right?”

The professor seemed somewhat confused. He got agitated (for no good reason, imho) and said something like “No, I mean it’s due before midnight on Monday!” Still… ambiguous… I pressed further and ultimately seemed to get from him that he meant it’s due before Monday, i.e. at the instant when Sunday becomes Monday. I would call this 11:59pm on Sunday to avoid confusion. So, I left the class thinking it was due one day earlier than I had previously thought. You see, to me, midnight suggests late at night… which to me means when the day ends… i.e., when someone says “Monday at midnight” I assume they mean at the end of Monday, or 11:59pm essentially.

Anyway, I learn several minutes later from a classmate that he did actually mean that but to avoid further confusion he had changed the due date and time to Monday at 11:00pm. So my question which actually served all the members of the class by clarifying this confusion ultimately led to him punishing us by docking us an hour. What’s so fucking hard about 11:59pm? It’s so fucking annoying!