EDITOR’S CORNER
Dead Line to Deadlines
Adam W. Heft, CPG-10265
The dust of the 2022 Annual Meeting has begun to settle as I write this. The turnout was good, and our participants enjoyed all aspects of the conference. For those who attended and got to experience Michigan’s hospitality, thank you! I encourage those who delivered a technical presentation to consider modifying their talk and submitting it as a technical article for an upcoming edition of TPG. I also would welcome a modification of our the “Tales from the Field” to include a “Tales from the Annual Meeting” article. Tell us about your experiences on a field trip, the overall meeting experience (particularly if you were a first-time attendee), or even if you spent some time after the meeting exploring on your own. I’ll make this even easier and suggest that it doesn’t even have to be about this year’s meeting.
The Oct/Nov/Dec TPG edition includes technical articles about soil investigation issues in Hawaii, modelling groundwa- ter contamination, and a piece on multiple working hypotheses. We also have a student article, a book review, and several Letters to the Editor. We also congratulate our new slate of National Executive Committee members and the recipients of the 2022 National and Section awards. Please join me in con- gratulating these individuals for their hard work and service to the Institute!
This is my final column for my first term as Editor. It is not my last, however. My thanks to each of you who expressed their confidence in me and satisfaction with the job I have been doing by reelecting me for a second two-year term as your Editor. My thanks to my predecessor John Berry for his ongoing assistance with his insightful reviews and comments. And of course, a big Thank You! to Sara Pearson as Design Editor for her vision in designing and laying out each edition of TPG and improving the overall appearance significantly.
My last column talked about professionalism and “What do High Standards of Conduct Apply to?”. This article touches on a related aspect, specifically the issue of deadlines. We all know what the word means today. But do you know where the word originated and how it was originally used? I found a couple of references on the Mental Floss website. The first was a reference used by early 20th century printers – the deadline was a line marked on the cylindrical printing press and was the point outside of which text would be illegible. The second was from the mid-1800s used by anglers to refer to a weighted fishing line that did not move in the water.
But the reference that likely influenced the modern meaning of the word has a darker meaning, and dates back to the civil
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war. In 1864, Confederate Captain Henry Wirz was put in charge of the prisoner of war Camp Sumter, which was located near Andersonville in Georgia. This was one of the largest prisoner of war camps for union soldiers, and its conditions were reportedly grim. The lack of clean water, warm clothing, and adequate sanitation were the cause of the death of an estimated one-third of the nearly 45,000 prisoners held there. But in addition to this, Captain Wirz created what was known as the camp’s dead line: a line marked by thin strips of wood nailed to posts or a line of turned earth inside the stockade of the camp. He instructed the prison guard to shoot and kill any prisoner that touched or crossed this line.
After the war ended, Captain Wirz was arrested, tried, and found guilty of abuses of wartime prisoners of war. He was hanged in November 1865, which I find is rather ironic given that he created what became know as a dead line, but later ended up dead at the end of another kind of line. After the trial of Captain Wirz, this usage of deadline continued until about 1920, when the military history of the word faded away and was replaced by the current meaning – the time by which something is due.
So, what’s the point, you ask? Well, we all have deadlines in our day to day activities, particularly with regard to comple- tion of some aspect of a project. We call some of our deadlines “soft”, meaning they are somewhat flexible, while others are “hard” or “drop-dead”, meaning they are critical deadlines that can’t be missed or extended for any reason. While no one is apt to shoot you for missing a hard deadline, there could be serious repercussions for doing so. It could involve the loss of a valued client, monetary fines or penalties, or in some cases, termination of one’s employment.
I’m sure that most of us have encountered (and occasionally, missed) deadlines. I have missed a few myself, although only the “soft” variety. I do everything I can not to miss deadlines, and I absolutely hate it when I do. Part of being professional is doing everything we can not to miss a deadline, or if it becomes unavoidable, to provide as much notice as possible or to try to find an alternate way (perhaps by involving others to help complete the work) of meeting the deadline. Often, miss- ing a deadline means a delay in completing something, and consequently makes it harder for someone else to complete their subsequent tasks.
So please be professional when it comes to deadlines; don’t ignore them or blow them off even if they are not critical. Your colleagues and coworkers will thank you!
Oct.Nov.Dec 2022 • TPG 3
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