College students are dependant on their computers – at least I am. I have papers to type, OWLs and WebCT work to complete, e-mails to check, research to do and online notes and syllabuses to refer to. And that’s just for my actual classes.

I am an Instant Message addict. I use my computer as a stereo, a DVD player and as my main form of communication with my friends down the hall, my parents, and my friends abroad in Australia.

To my horror, the Tuesday before Spring Break, my computer had a melt down. It froze up and wouldn’t let me reboot it. After trying repeatedly to fix the problem myself, I admitted defeat and lugged my laptop across campus to the Office of Information Technologies.

What a mistake.

I had been warned the OIT staff wasn’t very helpful – that they were incompetent and didn’t care what was wrong and just repeatedly gave a machine-like answer of “update your virus scan.” I ignored the warning, and naively put my most prized possession into the hands of an apparent idiot.

Like any scared mother, I worried all over break about my computer and awaited the call from OIT to tell me that they had started on my computer. They told me it would take a week to fix, so I checked my voicemail as soon as I got back from Spring Break. The call hadn’t come.

I had dropped it off the Thursday before Spring Break, so I was expecting to pick it up on the Monday when classes started again. When I didn’t receive a phone call, I thought maybe they just hadn’t remembered to call. So I headed on over to the OIT office on Tuesday to check on the status of my computer.

I filled out my little slip, rang the bell and handed my slip to the woman behind the desk. She took it back behind the wall and came back out with one of the “technicians.” He looked up my name and told me they couldn’t find my computer. I, of course, got very upset. He then explained that one of the full-time staffers must have taken it to work and that I shouldn’t worry. He then told me I would receive a call when it was done. I should have taken the missing computer as a warning.

A week later and I still hadn’t received a call. Spending Spring Break without my computer wasn’t so bad. While home, I had full access to my parent’s machine, and being without mine was a mere inconvenience. Being on campus without my computer is an entirely different story.

I am out of touch with my friends because I can’t go online. I have to ask my neighbors and friends to use their computers to check my e-mail or do online assignments. I have become a regular at the computer lab in the library where I have to go to type and print my assignments for class. Being dependant on the campus computer labs prevents me from being able to get my work done when I want to. It’s great that computer labs are available to students, but they don’t replace the convenience of having your own computer in your room.

I had three papers to write yesterday, but only time to write one while the labs were open. I had to skip one class to finish a paper for another. I finally lost patience and headed back to OIT. After waiting in line and explaining my problem to the staff, my computer and I were reunited. It was a bittersweet reunion for me. Although I finally had my computer back in my possession, I still couldn’t use it. After a long two and a half weeks, the

“technicians” at OIT hadn’t even looked at it yet.

The story I got from them was that someone forgot to register it properly and that essentially they didn’t even know it was there until I came in and asked for it back. My computer was held hostage for two and a half weeks because of the complete and utter incompetence of the OIT staff.

Molly Eggleston is a Collegian columnist.