Instead of ornaments and wrapping paper its binders, varying subject notebooks and "USED" stickers peppering the book spines in the crowded text isles. This semester was like any other fall semester in the country. Thousands of new students with wide eyes see campus for the first time, while the returning students have met up with already established friends and make straight lines from building to building in an already familiar campus.
Seeing a semester opening at the University of Utah surprises me every time. We always think we are completely prepared, and we never are. Professors missed adoption time lines, this means the books they want does not make buyback, which means less inexpensive used books are available, meaning the bookstore gets criticized. (By the way, if you want to complain about expensive books write a letter to Barnes and Noble, who averages 50% on their margins, not a college text department that makes <25%). This year, something was messed up in the enrollment system. Either that or students waited till the last minute to enroll in every class. Since we use this information to buy books for the class, we depend on history patterns and 'intuition' to make sure we don't order too many or too few books, in which both cases the cost of the books are increased either because we have to rush more books in, or pay to send extras back. This time, every class was short on books. My math class had no homework this weekend because our book was sold out and the sorry asses who didn't bother to get the book till it was too late complained to the teacher.
Just a day into semester opening the credit card system went down. I found out by email it was a front end processor back east that crashed and 140 college store were affected. Imagine that, 140 universities across the country during the busiest season of the year have NO credit cards and no debit cards. This lasted all of Tuesday. I'd have to say our staff was AMAZING though. Everyone stepped up, everyone helped every customer, I even heard one customer started to get annoyed at the number of times he was offered help! haha. There were jokes made to keep the mood light. Everyone showed their amazing talents, and we all made it through the tough spots, even if a little delusional from the experience. At one point I was taking a stack of books from the service desk back to shelve in the text section. I wanted to arrange them on my way in order of section I knew I'd be walking through when I lost my coordination on two of the big texts crashed to the floor. Once I noticed the book that landed face up I started laughing out loud. It was the text "Motor Control".
I will try to update this post with more. Till then, happy Fall Semester!
This semester opening has been fun.
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1 comment:
I guess you're lucky you didn't drop the book, "Head Trauma."
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