Friday, November 03, 2006

"Please Verify"

The funding application that I've just finished has one evil feature, for those of us with a touch of the obsessive-compulsive. In order to print off the final version of the application, you need to click this button that "verifies" that you've completed your application. After you've clicked that button, you can make no further changes. You can print off drafts of the application, but it puts this big grey "please verify" across the page.

I've read over this application a million times already. And most of the information was just carried over from the previous two times I applied (the nice thing about the online application: they save your information and automatically fill in your previous application information). But I'm having trouble clicking that "verify" button and printing off the final copy, because what it I print off that final copy and only then notice a glaring error? Like, what if I spelled my name horribly wrong or accidentally put insults in the "research contributions" section or something, and I only notice after there's nothing I can do to change it?

It doesn't help that my supervisor decided to wait until today to read over my final draft of my Program of Study (which is a Word document, and has nothing to do with the online application that must be "verified" and printed) until today, meaning that I'm waiting until I get the offical "okay" from him before I print that part. But, as I stated in the parentheses, that's just a Word document. It has no bearing on my online application. There's no reason why I can't print off the final application.

Except that the whole "verify" button business has such a horrible finality to it.

(Okay, one more read-over and then I'll "verify" and print.)

(Note to Ky, my fellow punctuation stickler: I'm not using those quotation marks for wrong-headed emphasis.)

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