Helpdesk Technician

Perhaps the most elite of Grinnell College's Technology Consultants, the Helpdesk Staff were trained to provide the highest-quality technical support the college could offer to students. There was no technical task which we would turn down, and we would take each case as far as possible given our equipment and skill sets. These challenges often required multiple days of work (unlike traditional TC issues) and ran the gamut from optimizing operating systems to finding failing hardware to speaking with Sony and other manufacturers on behalf of users. Our day-to-day operations largely consisted of ridding computers of malware and configuring the relatively tedious wireless settings, but the helpdesk always housed one or two "tough" problems, which I enjoyed solving.

For example, I received the Helpdesk Foster Parent award for nursing an ailing desktop from the grave by discovering its dying (though misleading) hard drive, donating a small hard drive of my own, and when the user couldn't find the original Windows cds, installing Ubuntu in its stead. I walked a professor completely through e-mailing a photo found on the Internet when she wasn't experienced enough to know where the control key was. I created a 95% backup/recovery from a hard drive which could not be recognized within its native operating system. I saved a guest lecturer's presentation by quickly re-seating the RAM on her Powerbook minutes before the event. All in all, this position entailed the most challenging and (therefore) most rewarding technical issues I have faced while providing just enough user interaction to never allow me to lose site of the people I was helping.