When Technology Decides Not to Cooperate

I realized a long time ago that when you have a disability you have to rely heavily on technology to do a lot of things that non-disabled people take for granted. As one of my teachers in junior high said once, “technology is wonderful when it works, but when it doesn’t it can drive you crazy.” Today I had a minor incident that served to prove her point.

During the first meeting of my History of American Journalism class our instructor told us there would be several pop quizzes throughout the semester. This is just to make sure we’re doing our reading assignments and that we’re not skipping class. The quizzes are multiple choice, so my classmates fill in their answers on scantrons. Obviously I can’t do that, so Angie and my instructor thought about another way for me to take the quizzes at the same time as everyone else. My instructor would load the quiz onto a USB drive, and then I can just type my choices using my laptop.

This method works just fine; I have used it for one of my classes before. However today my laptop refused to cooperate for some unknown reason. My instructor gave us our first pop quiz today. I was just setting up my laptop when he gave me the USB. When I tried to open the document using MS Word the program was unresponsive. After desperately closing and reopening the program several times I still had no luck; it still refused to cooperate. Finally I decided to restart my laptop. Since the quiz was only five questions we were only given a few minutes to complete it.

By the time I was restarting my computer the time was up. I told my instructor I was unable to open the document, so he gave me two options. I could step out of the room while the class went over the quiz and maybe take it after class, or I could get a zero for it — we get two extra quizzes that do not count towards our grade. I did not want to bother getting out of the class, so I chose the latter option. Luckily my instructor was very understanding.

All I can say is that this had never happened to me before! I guess it was too early for my laptop to be in class – the class is at 9:30. Oh well, hopefully it’ll behave itself the next time we have a quiz.

Update: Since this “difficulty” wasn’t my fault my instructor emailed me yesterday in the evening to discuss a make-up assignment for the quiz.