Read Instructions Carefully

Damn! I messed up! How careless I was! I cannot regret more what I did—actually, what I DID NOT do. Where can I locate a magic to turn back time? I really want to slap myself four hours ago on the cheek and shout—“Read instructions carefully!” That is why I cannot believe myself at all. AT ALL.

Don’t worry. I will explain from the beginning.

Nearly all assignments at UoPeople have word count requirements. For example, instructions such as that this assignment should be a minimum of 200 words and a maximum of 500 words. They have two meanings to me. The first one is to identify how deeply I should answer the questions. When the required word count is relatively small, I can assume that grasping the points and briefly stating them are important. On the other hand, when the required word count is relatively large, the assignment may demand more detailed explanations. The second meaning is—naturally, as a non-native English speaker, writing essays in English is tough. Therefore, word count determines my mental attitude towards that assignment. Seriously. A laborious word count makes me sick and overwhelmed, and I feel like I want to give up my life itself. Ha ha. But seriously.

So far, I feel it’s easy to write below 300 or 400 words. I feel sick to write over 750 words.

When assignments are open, I first check the required word count for each assignment. And, in this term, as always, I did that as soon as the term was open. I located the numbers—the two that designate the minimum and maximum word counts. Those two numbers are 250 and 500. That is, I need to write only below 500 words! How fantastic! The load of this course’s assignment seems relatively light!

That is the very past self whom I really want to punch.

I located the numbers, 250 and 500. They were correct. However, I located ONLY the numbers. That is, for what are these numbers?

I interpreted—did immediately—that these numbers are the required word count for the entire assignment. However, they are the required word count for each question. The assignment consists of three questions. In other words, I needed to write between 750 and 1,500 words for the entire assignment.

Damn.

Honestly, when writing the answer, I wondered how to summarize my explanations while satisfying all the assignment requirements. I really struggled with fitting 500 words below. I had a question about whether this assignment is really supposed to have such a small word count. I should have—really should have—taken care of this doubt.

So why did I make such a stupid mistake? In my native language, I can understand an entire sentence and paragraph even if I glance at only one or two words. That is the power of a native language. However, as a non-native English speaker, I cannot see the surrounding words when I focus on the specific words—the numbers. In a non-native language, it is not enough to glance to understand. To understand the full meaning of a sentence or paragraph, I need to actually read it. So, focusing only on the numbers without reading the entire sentence is a primary cause of this tragedy. In conclusion, I was just so careless as not to read the instructions.

But I try to make some excuses. Until now, all the instructions had designated the word count for the entire assignment. That is why I misunderstood in this assignment. Don’t you think that all instructions must standardize the format?

Huh? You say that I must read the instructions carefully? You are absolutely right! I will do my best.