Jermiah Robinson
November 9th, 2025
Old Dominion University – IT Help Desk
CYSE 368 – 15101
I have now made it to the 250-hour mark of my internship with the IT Help Desk as a Student Lead. While I like to be a perfectionist when it comes to my job, none of us can be perfect. I recently received my grades for my overall tickets and was able to average around 95%. This is an exceptionally good percentage, but it is not perfect. I have learned, however, that it is important to use these grades as an overall look over your performance at the IT Help Desk.
During one of my night shifts, I received an important call that required me to act fast when considering what could happen if I gave out improper information. I received a call around 8PM during my shift. Over at the Student Health Center, the front desk employees were unable to lock the front doors to the building while they were closing. Students were walking in after hours and were asking if they could get an appointment while they were closing all offices and doors. In these cases, I needed to act quickly before more students started to come in as the front desk employee was about to leave. With cases like these, we normally cannot just lock doors that belong to these buildings. The IT Help Desk is quite limited when it comes to door access, especially as we can only open certain doors within the university through Card Center. I noted down that the door readers were blinking red and that the lady could not lock the doors at this point. After another student came in and she had to talk with them, I quickly investigated more resources regarding doors. In these cases, we only have few options left. ODU Police Department has overall access to doors and can even lock doors on their door viewer. I also could have contacted the Door Access team directly, but due to how late it was, they were out of office. I decided to go with the ODU Police Department route just as the user got back to me. I told her right away to contact ODU PD to further assist with the door issues. She thanked me and went to do that immediately. Right after she hung up, I quickly called ODU PD as well just to verify everything with them and let them know exactly what is going on with the door readers. They told me they received the same report and have dispatched offices to assist with locking the doors.
After a call like that, I was a little on edge and felt like I said something wrong. However, my supervisor stated that I made the right call by not only double checking with ODU PD about the report but also creating a ticket for the Door Access team to look at. It boosted my grade. I managed to ger second place in grading, and I felt happy to hear that I was doing an excellent job at the position. The next night, however, served as a good test of my patience.
I received a call near the end of my shift. This call would last for about 30 minutes after my shift was already over. I did not want to leave abruptly, so I decided to assist the professor with their issue with the Outlook application. After getting into a zoom call to remote into the computer and see what was going on, I noted that the fix was just a right click prompt to move their mail into a separate inbox. The rest of the time before this fix was not only guiding the professor on how to use Zoom, but also having the professor explain the problem in more detail instead of saying “The app isn’t working.” After creating the ticket to document the work I had done, it was 9:30PM and I was ready to head home after a long call. My supervisor noted the call that I had and gave me extra time on my timesheet. He also included a note that I was dealing with a longer call after my shift had ended. He thanked me for staying on and helping the professor with the problem with Outlook.
Conclusion
In conclusion, grading serves as a particularly important judgement over your work. With proper information entered and the right answers given, a high grade means that you have done very well with tickets. I managed to score second place for grading for October, and I hope to do it again and even aim for first place for November. While the calls have been getting pretty tough and even scary at times to the point where I had to call ODU PD for the first time, it feels great that I’m able to assist everyone within the university, even into the late night where most staff and faculty are no longer there. My patience continues to grow, and my fast-acting skills will continue to improve as I do more work at the IT Help Desk. I enjoy the position of Student Lead and will always be sure to serve as a leader to coworkers.