I'm writing this on the weekend after Labor Day. The past two weeks have been filled with sitting at a computer by day, assisting students at UMass with activating their computer accounts, and standing in the kitchen at night, washing and freezing basil and cooking tomato sauce. It's mostly a blur of faces, frustrations, and vegetables.
My post-retirement part-time work arrangement at UMass is to work fulltime during the busiest periods of the year for new computer accounts and problems - such as the beginnings of semesters. Some of my colleagues at Help Services in the Office of Information Technologies worked every day for two weeks around and including the Labor Day weekend; I took off that Saturday and Sunday morning. Students and/or their parents called or stood in line, anxious about setting up accounts, changing passwords, connecting their computers to the network. Students from afar, taking one or more courses through UMass Online or Continuing Education, discovered they are required to have a UMass email address and called. We're a friendly and supportive bunch, and were coping well with the hours, the usual computer glitches, and the repetitious questions, plus basically living at work, although I think most of us were eating too much of the food provided over that long weekend. The lines outside our offices weren't getting too long, and we even managed to find time to return phone calls. The people I found at home on Sunday or Labor Day were quite surprised and pleased that we were working and ready to help them get going on their UMass careers.
Then the computer glitches got really serious. Mid-day Tuesday we already had longer lines in the hall than we had had all weekend, with more students focussing on the semester about to start and more of them having more complicated problems connecting their computers than just changing passwords. Suddenly, Spire, which is the program everyone has to use to see their class schedule, let alone register for a class or drop one, stopped working. The lines got longer and longer as students waited, hoping it would come back up. It didn't. The technicians found a way for staff to be able to continue changing passwords for people who didn't know them, so they could log on whenever the system became available again, but we couldn't predict when it would. One floor up, people tried to figure out what was wrong; on the ground floor we faced the customers. The students, especially the freshmen, were anxious to find out what courses they are in so they could buy their textbooks and know where to go to class on Wednesday. Faculty were trying to see their course rosters. For a couple of hours all I could do was assure them they were not the only ones in that situation. In the middle of the afternoon, we were given a Web address for a complete list of the meeting times and places of all the University courses, and told that the Registrar's Office was able to print individual schedules for students, so we could start sending them over to the other end of campus for that. I wonder how long the lines got over there. I heard that the Registrar's Office was going to open early the next morning, but I didn't see any formal announcement and they didn't change their phone message, so I don't know if the students knew that.
Wednesday morning, as I came into work, I saw a lot of students walking with apparent purpose, so many of them must have known where their classes were, but I'm sure a good percentage did not. Spire was still not operating. We did have fewer anxious people at our doors; I guess they realized we couldn't do much for them. The lines for people with connection or virus problems were longer, and we continued to have other password changes and accounts to set up. I caught up on returning the phone calls from the past two days. Thursday, they got Spire working well enough to assign blocks of time to academic staff and to students (staff in the day, students 7 pm to 8 am) so that necessary work could begin to be done.
Then Friday, a different computer program, the one we use to set up accounts and change passwords for Internet access and email, took its vacation. I had a line outside my door anyway, because instead of the usual three of us, I was the only one doing new accounts at that time (one person sick, the other processing payroll). The first four people I saw all had complicated problems. Then the program crashed. Students anxious to get this done before the weekend sat in the hall for a couple of hours as the technicians for this program tried to get it going and to figure out why it wouldn't restart. Around noon we suggested to the half dozen or so still sitting there that they should leave and come back later; we promised they could go to the front of the line, and gave them "a secret word" they could use to remind us of our promise. Luckily, sometime after 2, we were back in business, and the lines never got long after that.
Throughout the week, the people I talked with were remarkably patient and considerate; they understood we hadn't caused the problem and were doing our best. UMass has very nice students.
And thank goodness, we are "observing" this weekend. I've still got tomatoes to clean, peel and cook, but (except for this column) my mousing hand is getting a rest.