I submitted an assignment late by minutes. What now?

This one is for any university or high school kid who is anxiously Googling "Will my professor take away my marks for being X minutes late?" or "What to say if I handed in my work late by X minutes" because yeah, been there done that.

I have a clean record. Until now.

So when I found myself at 2353 wondering what I have not done for the week, lightning struck horror into my eyes as I flew all over the phone to download my translation assignment. I had completed it eons ago, but I got caught up with other things and forgot about actually submitting the work. Without my laptop with me, I had to work with the nasty and ridiculously buggy LumiNUS app in my phone. That was the deadliest mistake.

I went to Google Docs, downloaded the right files in PDF and DOCX format, then tried to upload them into the system. 2355.

It failed. I panicked. I tried again. 2356.

I finally accepted that it was not going to work. I rushed to open my Outlook app. It took forever to open up, and I hammered in my professor's name. I threw a PDF in with no header and submitted it. 2359.

0000. I gave up on the app version and used my mobile browser instead.

Once again, I tried to upload but my butterfingers clicked the PDF instead of the DOCX and it was rejected. 0003.

I groaned in despair and tried again. This time round, the file actually made it. 0007.

Later at 1AM, I still felt bad and I penned an apology email explaining why my work came in by email instead of through the system.

The whole time, I was mortified. Punctuality was my middle name and I made sure to turn up for class 30 minutes early if I could, I even have a streak count of me turning on the lights at the NUS Theatrette. And this class had been one of my favorite non-major electives so far - I stayed back every lecture long after every student had gone home to discuss techniques with the Professor. He praised my work as excellent after I translated a poem on the spot into classical Chinese form, and on many occasions I had offered my views in a lecture theatre - there was only one other student in the LT who had that habit. I am truly happy to be that front row student who gives my all in every class, and so this was such a painful deviation from my standard that I am still cringing about it.

On Teachers' Day too? Man I really pick my moments to shine.

I was texting my friends after the fact and they were sympathetic enough. "Late loss of virginity," one of them commented, earning him my signature long and all caps laugh. And in reference to my earlier comment of how painful it was, he replied, "Yeah, checks out." Some friends I have (kidding folks if you see this, I love y'all). I still feel awful, but they reassured me that I did submit on time but in a different way so technically I was not late, but I don't know about that.

It did make me feel slightly better, knowing that the "late by minutes due to a goddamn technical fault" thing is a universal experience. Realizing that it's just a couple of percentage points alleviates the pain too, but goodness, I really wanted that A+. Guess it's not happening now but well. Nine more weeks to turn things around. I'll just have to be a mad overachiever for every lecture, tutorial and assignment from now on.

UPDATE: I survived. The professor accepted my work. Thank the heavens above.