Learning From Forgetting

So often, I see an event from my life as a learning experience, not because I did something right, it went really well, and I want to do it again, but because I did something poorly and it had some serious consequences. In this case, I forgot I had homework.

As far as my internal calendar is concerned, it's a bit too early to be thinking about homework. Classes at Sac City haven't even started yet, and I usually don't expect to get any assignments there until at least after the first week of class. I just had the first day of Pathway class last Thursday, and though I remembered that there's a Due Wednesday, Due Saturday system that had been established last semester, I had completely forgotten that that meant that I should have been doing homework either yesterday or today, if not earlier.

I don't blame myself for forgetting. People forget things sometimes. Things slip through the cracks. I had gotten used to the Winter Break routine of not really having to worry about what day of the week it was, so it hadn't quite clicked in my mind that Friday and Saturday are homework days. In fact, last Friday didn't even feel like a Friday because my normal Monday-Thursday classes haven't started yet.

what I blame myself for is not having been in the right frame of mind to get a reminder. Usually, when something's really important and you're trying to live righteously, you can count on a prompting from the Spirit to help you remember that important thing that slipped your mind. But I've been too caught up in interesting, but not very useful Youtube videos, and I've been treating my blog, a spiritual obligation of mine, like a lesser priority. It's my fault I forgot, and it's my fault I didn't get a reminder. Moving forward, I'm going to try to pay attention to things like homework assignments and upcoming due dates, and I'm going to repent of my inattentiveness and try to listen more to the spirit than to the guys who make Extra Credits videos.

But what does this mean for me now? It means I have about three and a half hours to do some homework that I should have done over the last two or three days. And the website is having problems. Again, this is all my fault. I have no control over the technical issues that are going on right now, but if I had done my homework earlier, like I was supposed to, this issue wouldn't be a problem now, and if I had encountered this problem back when I should have done my homework, I would have had time to talk to someone to get the problem resolved.

Hopefully, the website will start working again soon, and I'll be able to rush through the quizzes and assignments. Otherwise, this'll put a negative mark on my eventual grade for this class. But you know what? That's okay. My average grade will still be pretty good - I mean, this is an ENGLISH class! And having some nice, long-term consequences will help the lesson I've learned tonight sink in. It'll remind me of the mistake I made and what I need to do to avoid making that mistake in the future. I'll try to do my homework tonight, but if I can't, and I get marked 0% for these assignments, at least I'll know why, and it'll be an experience that I can learn from.