Heigh Ho!!! It's Home From Work We Go!

"Happiness is an attitude. We either make ourselves miserable, or happy and strong. The amount of work is the same.”      
-Francesca Reigler

One of the most important things I learned during my change management class is that most people are resistant to change.  Whenever some system is being changed, most people will resist because they are either afraid of change, they don’t see a flaw with the old system or they simply are complacent with current methods.  As it turns out, I have experienced this firsthand since I started work.

So first off, what does my job involve currently?  Well, as I mentioned before, the University of Koblenz has a Summer Academy program for international students/professionals.  This will involve a series of classes on management, computer science and information science, all of which are given in English.  The program runs from June 27-July 22, and before I arrived registration had opened and the scholarship applications had been received.  Just before I arrived, the scholarship application was closed and the recipients chosen.

Enter me.  I am given access to the email account and told that it is my job to handle all communications between the applicants and the Summer Academy Team (which currently consists of me and 2 others, including my boss).  I am told there are Excel sheets with all the information I need, but that I need to install Dropbox to access it.  Problem #1:  I install Dropbox on my laptop, but I can’t edit the tables because my Excel is not compatible with the PC version the have it on.  Problem #2: I can’t do it on my work computer because I don’t have Admin privileges to install it.  Took me a whole week to get someone to give me permission to install it.  Meanwhile, emails kept pouring in and no one was updating any of the data.

The learning curve was pretty high because so far we had about 90 people registered, of which around 13 were given scholarships.  Some of them hadn’t applied for scholarship and were simply paying themselves.  Others are simply in the system and I haven’t heard from them at all since I started working.  I finally got to install Dropbox and it took me 2 full days to get that entire table sorted and updated and with everything it needed ready to go.  I am quite happy with the progress I made.

I’m quite happy that my work hours have ended up being 9:30 am to about 5:30-6:30pm.  I go in and the first thing I do is check emails.  Does anyone need anything new from us?  Who has paid?  Who has some dumb question I’ve been asked a thousand times?  You have to be very patient with some of these people, but at least I get a kick out of reading their applications, resumes, and everything.  Confidential information, of course, but I have access to it.  I definitely have some names that I won’t be forgetting any time soon.

Besides all the email back and forth, I also have to ensure that all participants who are coming get invoices so that they pay, and once they pay I need to send them an invitation letter so they can get their visa process started.  It’s very detailed stuff, especially with so many names.  The amount of things I am expected to remember is truly large.  However, I have been blessed with a good talent for remembering names and people, so I have been getting better at this every day. 

The days continue to pass by and every day I do the same.  For now this is what I am meant to be doing.  Once this process is over I will have a different set of tasks, mostly related with dealing with the student affairs part of the Summer Academy.  More details about that once the time comes, but for now I simply spend a lot of time emailing and updating tables.

However, one thing does bother me.  These people apparently are yet to discover the wonders of Google.  Gmail, Google Docs and Google Forms to me are synonymous with efficiency and productivity.  Making a registration as a Google Form is the easiest thing I have ever done and it makes it all into a Google Doc which is easily accessible and shared to all people on the team.  However, registration for the Summer Academy is done via a system they created using mySQL, which probably took them twice the time to make than what it would take me to create a Google Form.  And the email service crashes at least once a day for about 20 minutes at a time.  My umich.edu account is so much more reliable.  I’m supposed to evaluate this project once it’s over and give feedback for next year. 

Recommendation #1: Scrap your system and just use Google.  It makes life so much easier!

So yes, my plan is to show them the Google way and hopefully have them use that system next year.  You’re very welcome, Google…