"Reply All": Not So Dope

So, here's something awesome I did today...

But first, a little bit of background:

A couple of weeks ago, four of my classmates and myself entered the Microsoft Advertising Digital Challenge (MADC). The MADC is a competition open to graduate and undergraduate level students. The premise of the challenge is to develop an advertising campaign aimed towards the college-aged audience for Office Live Workspace. If you have ever used GoogleDocs, Workspace is similar, but has the added benefit of sharing files using all Windows Office applications.

We had about a month to prepare for the competition, but with finals preparation and spring break right in the middle of it all, when it came down to it, we ended up putting our entire campaign together in 3-4 days. On the day it was due, we worked ten hours straight to tweek and finalize our written proposal and accompanying PowerPoint presentation to email to Microsoft. The deadline was midnight and exactly 11:58 pm, we sent it in. I seriously did not think we would get it in on time, but by some miracle, we just barely made the cut off. It was awesome!

Just last week, three days after we sent in our proposal, we found out that we had beat out 136 teams to make it into the top 10 of the competition! We were invited to New York to present our campaign to Microsoft Advertising Executives at the end of April to compete in the semi-final and possibly final rounds of the competition. I was in San Francisco with school when we found out and it was so exciting! Woohoo!

Crappy thing about it is that we have to fund our own trip out. Yeah. Poopy.

Thankfully, we have been able to receive assistance funding from our school to help us out. In all instances, we actively made requests to the Warsaw Center and the Graduate School administration. Both have very generously offered to essentially cover airfare and hotel to make our trip possible and so that we can represent our school.

So here's the kicker: We received an email today from the Director of the Business School informing us of the great news that we would be receiving financial assistance for our trip. In all of my uncontrollable excitement, I hastily hit "Reply All" and sent the following email:

"so dope. So i guess we just find a hotel and book then get reimbursed? so great!"

And right when I sent it, I knew I would regret it. Little did I know that the initial email that I had "Reply All"ed included not only the Director, but the Dean of the Lundquist School of Business, the Director of Fiscal Services and the Director of the Warsaw Center. Awesome.

"So dope." Who says "so dope"?! More like "so embarrassing." I felt "so lame" about it that I had to send apologetic emails to all unintended recipients. My Warsaw advisor replied with "word" which I thought was pretty funny, but I have not heard from the others. Man. So embarrassing...I feel shame.

A lesson to everyone, do not "Reply all". I could rather say be careful when you "Reply All" but I just say, do not do it. Too many predicaments have come of it. Just start a whole new email thread if the list of recipients isn't too long and move on with your happy life. It's just not worth the risk.