Who taught: Ravi

Crunch time (source: http://blog.myhappyenglish.com/)

I am co-teaching a Data Mining course every spring. For this course, Ravi was the TA this spring and he has done amazing job helping us and students. He has been working on the final submission of his thesis as he was doing the TA.

Well, that is not easy. As we are discussing having a review session for students, I wanted to make sure that his thesis is going well.

In his response, he said, “The thesis will be done on time – but it is definitely crunch time : )”

As I was reading his email, I realize that there is this expression, crunch time. I have heard of it before but it did not stay in my memory. You know what I mean, right? There are so many phrases that you hear but you cannot remember and thus no chance of using it afterward.

Well, crunch time was one of them. In fact, people in software industry use this phrase often. When do they use? Mostly, when the project is due or right before the due.

Haven’t you been in that situation where you gotta really finish things up but you do not have enough time? And….. you have to be really fast, getting things done?

I am sure most of my students experience crunch time in every two or three weeks. 🙂 They need to finish all their reports and coding and submit the final deliverables for a project in two or three weeks. Once they are done, there is another project waiting for them. Very intense! What would you expect? It’s Carnegie Mellon.

So, Ravi’s usage of the phrase in his email about his final thesis made me feel it very well.

Question! What kind of mode are you in, when the time is crunch? That’s right! You are in crunch mode. Some of my friends really enjoy being in crunch mode. I do not. In fact, I hate being in crunch mode. When things are due, I would rather be in review mode with majority of the work are done.

How about you, my friends? Do you enjoy crunch time?