don’t understand computers. I should make that clear now. Not only do I not understand them, but I distrust and slightly fear the bloody things too. I am pretty sure my laptop is running a vendetta against my coursework and any university desktop I approach seems to commit hara-kiri before I can complete the most simple of tasks.
With this is mind, I am spending my last ever long summer holiday working 9-5 for 11 weeks in an IT support service. But this is not just your bog-standard IT support service; this is one that runs in a technology department within a massive campus full of engineers and physicist. When they need IT help, you know something isvery wrong.
But Imogen, I hear you ask, you are a biochemist! What would possess you to take such a job? Well, like most things I do in life, it seemed like a good idea at the time. All my previous summer jobs (almost all summer, every summer, since I was in sixth form) have been in a biochemistry lab; it is time I saw some more of the world of science before I commit the next three years of my life to just one field. The theory is quite simple, I really must learn about computers to get on and this is the perfect opportunity to get hands on experience working with the wretched things. After all, one must know one’s enemy and all that.
And so, with this in mind, I was up and out of bed at the crack of 7:30am on Monday morning and was soon being driven out of the city by my (remarkably chipper for that time of morning) mother. No, she is not my personal taxi service, she just happens to work on the site too.
On arrival at the site, I was swiftly whisked through reception, given a yellow lanyard to make clear my status as “visitor” and “not to be trusted”, dragged through a maze of buildings and into a room that smelt of stale caffeine and nervous engineering students.
a room that smelt of stale caffeine and nervous engineering students
The source of the former turned out to be a free(!) coffee machine, which I quickly got myself acquainted with whilst I surveyed the crowd that was generating the latter.
After the standard round of introductions, it was clear that we were all here for summer placements or year-out courses. Networking opportunities were mostly overlooked in favour of trying to deconstruct the coffee machine to get a stronger espresso and comparing dissertation projects. I couldn’t be sure what went over worse, my placement in IT support or the “bio” in my degree title.
However, a riveting two and a half hour health and safety lecture soon took my mind off that. All clued up to what to go in case of asbestos (don’t touch it) and klaxons sounding (enter the nearest “substantial” building - scary) I headed up to my new office. It only took three wrong rooms until I found my new boss and was set up at my massive desk, with two windows and four monitors. Logging in barely took ten minutes and soon I was kitted out with my official ID card and administrative access to an alarming amount of computing power.
Thankfully I didn't have to deal with anything involving a server yet and instead I spent the next few hours pushing a trolley full of computer parts around seemingly unending corridors, fixing mechanical faults in printers and playing with the kit in the metrology lab – they have a photopolymer 3D printer and all sorts of exciting devices.
By the end of the working day I had walked 8km around the site, eaten my lunch alone as I couldn’t find the main canteen and driven the trolley into a small brick wall that I swear wasn’t there half a second before. I am still yet to interact with anyone within two decades of my age here; all the summer students appear to be kept individually trapped in small rooms where the damage that they can do is limited.
I was shattered and, for the first time in a while, extremely grateful to be spending the whole summer living at home. Nothing quite like a massive plate of homemade spaghetti Bolognese to perk up the end of the day.
Publish online at The Yorker 03/07/2013
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