IRB Mad Rush

The lady at IRB said that if I could get the application in today she would review it for me tomorrow so that I can still meet my deadlines and travel to gather data I thought it would take about 3 hours to complete the IRC applications and left it until yesterday Boy was that a mistake I stayed up all night and went to bed at 6:30 in the morning only to have my son wake me up an hour later But I was able to go back to bed again for another hour or so and then got up to see a client at 10:00 That went OK but then I had to rush over to see my adviser and department head to get their signatures Only when I got there my adviser had not filled up the form she had to fill up because it was a busy day at the department Luckily I had canceled my other noon appointment and so I stayed in her office and worked with her on it until it was done She signed it then the department head signed it and it was about 1:15 But I was not sure if all the 20-or-so pages of appendices were all properly labeled and so I went and doubled checked on them and sure enough found some mistakes which I corrected After that I pushed my haircut appointment 15 minutes later but when I got there I had to crap so badly and so I went into the bathroom for almost 10 minutes Yes yes Too much information Anyway it ended up that my haircut took extra long but I had just enough time to drive over to a coffee shop to down another cup of caffeine while I went through all the checklists to make sure that I had included everything Sure enough I discovered that I had forgotten to write my cover letter to explain my rushed time line That's when I also saw the bold print warning that there was to be no handwriting on the application but my adviser had written a couple of things by hand on the application Oh well I hope the lady at IRB will still accept it Then I went over to the copy store and made a couple of copies and had 20 minutes left to make a 15 minute drive over to the IRB office to hand in my application before it closed at 4:30 Why do people drive so slowly when you are in a rush Fark I revved until my tires started to wobble and then decided that it would be better for me to get there than to die trying and so I slowed down Finally I got near the office building Parking parking I needed parking Incredible what will motivate a person to pray And so I prayed and found a spot dropped in some quarters with trembling fingers and started running with just a vague direction in mind WTF The building was so huge Where the hurl was F3124 (made up room so you can't search me out online hah) This way that way I had no idea where I was The hallways looked like a maze I finally opened my mouth to ask This way then that way they said I followed Up stairs, then this corridor No backtrack Next corridor Up more stairs And finally with two minutes left I discovered there was construction blocking access to the office Fark A lady saw my anxiety and told me that way then that way I ran down the stairs then across the hall then pressed the elevator button and waited for hell to freeze over But it didn’t and the elevator binged and I got on got off and ran down the hallway The door to the office was just about to close I charged in and scared the staff closing the door and then pretended to walk casually towards the reception Oh oh No one was there I stood looking around Then a plump pleasant lady in the next cubicle smiled and I said I wanted to submit my IRB application She said "you can do it here" I gave it to her and she stamped it 02/16/09 I made it Whew

And so the IRB is submitted and I am anticipating that the lady at IRB will look at it and say "nah, you can't do this research because you don't have this or that form or you don't have this or that permission" But before all that let me keel over and die for a couple of hours from my non-stop adrenaline filled all-day mad rush with no sleep the previous night