A day in the life of a UPJ student

            I am a senior graduating college in December and currently commute to University of Pittsburgh at Johnstown.  I started using this computer lab when I was a freshman living in Laurel Hall without a printer.  The only time I am on campus now is when I have class, or when I am in the Blackington computer lab shown in the picture above.  This computer lab has been saving my life since freshman year because it is always open and is convenient for not only mac users, but windows users as well.  This lab provides us with a printer, a stapler, and a scanner, which I recently used for the first time.  I still don’t have a printer at home so being able to print my papers before class starts at this computer lab has prevented me from a lot of late assignments.  There is a separate printer outside of the room incase you want to print in color, which I had to do for a marketing plan last year which consisted of 105 pages.  Two weeks ago I presented a case study with my partner for my Leadership class and we had to use the scanner to scan the case study from the book for our class to read before we presented our opinion on it.  Another reason this computer lab is reliable is because when we were on fall break this past week, I had to work on homework the Monday we didn’t have class and came to Blackington to see every computer lab locked except the computer lab shown in the picture above.  Because this computer lab was open, I was able to get one of my History papers finished and printed and stapled ready to be turned in for class on Thursday. 

            For all the positives this computer lab has done for me, there are also quite a few negatives about this specific lab.  For example, the positioning of the printer is in the very right corner of the room and no matter where you are sitting, you will distract somebody else while walking to the printer because of how small the actual room is.  Being a business major, we are assigned numerous group projects and this room isn’t very convenient for those because you don’t want to distract other people and don’t have enough room to think.  If you are sitting on one of the macs that face the window, you can see numerous people going up and down the stairs, which causes another distraction because its hard to not stare at somebody walking in front of you who is more than likely staring back at you.  Overall, I would rate this computer lab a 7/10 because there have been more positives this lab has brought to me then negative but nothing is perfect.