In praise of MrPloppy

Have I mentioned lately just how wonderful MrPloppy is? I’ve been struggling all week to write an assignment for my linguistics course that’s due tomorrow, and I just couldn’t get my head round it. By this afternoon I was in total panic mode – the more I stared at it the less sense it was making, and the more aware I became of how little time I had left to finish it. I was seriously considering just packing in the whole course it had got me so stressed.

So I rang MrPloppy to tell him my woes, and he was a wonderful voice of sanity. He reminded me that the assignment is only worth 10% of my final mark, so even if I completely stuffed it up it wasn’t the end of the world, just a slightly lower grade, and then he suggested that when I got home we could look at it together.

Now you may not realise what a huge sacrifice that is. MrPloppy has no interest in linguistics at all, and finds studying tedious. However, he’s a great catalyst – somehow, in the process of explaining something to him, I get it straight in my own mind, and it all starts making sense.

So when I got home tonight, we sat down together and I explained where I was having problems. And as I started to explain, and as he asked the right sort of questions, things started to click. I started coming up with a few ideas, and within an hour had a clear picture of what I needed to do. And now, less than four hours after I sat down with him, I’ve completely finished writing my assignment. It’s not fantastic (no assignment left until the day before the deadline ever is!), but it’s a million times better than what I had four hours ago, which wasn’t much more than a blank piece of paper.

MrPloppy really is the best friend I could ever have.

…Now if only they’d let me take him into exams 🙂

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One Comment

  1. Excellent!

    The Mr and I do that sort of thing a lot, too. Just someone who’s prepared to ask intelligent questions and get you to put your own thoughts in order is invaluable. If that person is a warm body who actually cares about you it makes a huge difference 🙂

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