Robot took a run at a user manual for school. I wish it looked like this!

System Memory

Errors Not Remembered Are Errors Recommitted

A former student got in touch with me after catching last week’s piece. It turns out that my former student holds a Master’s degree in project management. We had a nice, brief, conversation about major themes from the field. One thing we discussed was the difference between operations and projects. Assuming I was picking up what he was putting down, operations refer to the normal functioning of the system, while projects are time-limited, value-adding endeavors in addition to normal operations. We discussed some other stuff, too, and then the week happened.

The conversation stayed with me, and I kept thinking about it as a couple of things transpired this week at work that might best be classified as annoyances. Both of them stem from the operations side of my school. Here are brief descriptions:

1. At the end of the week before last, we had an interscholastic event. This is a regular feature of our system, with students often leaving the country to visit other schools in our interscholastic association to participate. It’s a great thing. One of the knock-on impacts from this is that participating students are unable to sit for any assessments that are scheduled while they are not in school, and need to make them up when they return. In the case of this specific instance, this past week’s makeups…