Subject: Re: 24 hour computer lab
On 2 Nov 1996, Ben Ostrowsky wrote:
>"Suzanne M. Saunders" wrote:
>> It's a neat idea, but where would you find enough people willing
>>to work to keep it staffed?
>For ten dollars an hour and all the Mountain Dew you can drink, I know
>people who would *move* to Tampa for a job like that.
True. But I help *teach* this stuff in actual classes and I don't
get paid that much. Would any part of the university be willing
to pay that much for what they might see as babysitting the computers?
I see being a lab assistant as being a little like being a fire
fighter. Yes, part of the time one is getting paid to sit around and wait
for something to happen. But the rest of the time one is providing
services that are pretty urgent to the people who need them. In the CIS
labs, they tend to try and find people who know enough to maintain the
labs and can do other stuff (helping faculty, teaching skills in lab
classes, etc.) Some other labs want a warm body to make sure no one steals
the computers; they offer no training in helping users of the labs get
anything done, but they don't bother to make sure that the lab
assistants come in with knowledge or teach themselves. (Like this summer I
was in Cooper Lab and heard someone ask how to transfer a file up to their
UNIX account. The assistant said it couldn't be done there. I had to tell
them both that there was a windows FTP program on every computer in that
room.) Being a lab assistant sometimes combines the worst parts of working
with machines and working with people (though it's also a lot of fun at
other times) but the people who hire don't want to pay what it's worth.
Suzanne
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