Deadlines

“I love deadlines. I love the whooshing noise they make as they fly by.”. – Douglas Adams

No doubt you are familiar with that quote. I wish I had that kind of attitude towards deadlines, but my recent academic career seems to have beaten it out of me. Worse still, I approach deadlines rather like an outlaw on the top of a train: I’ll duck under them at the last moment, risking life and limb to make it.

I had two major deadlines to meet this month, and both of them saw me up at midnight working...