The inevitable technological war of printing
To start off, if you do not know me—which most of you probably don’t—I am a freshman currently enrolled in calculus one, and really do not like doing math on a computer. I am a classic pen and paper kind of guy, so you can imagine how annoying it was when I discovered that my professor posts all assignments and homework as PDFs on Brightspace.
The date is August 29, 2023. I have calculus Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. I am in need of the worksheets. Naturally, I thought to print them out. Previously, printing at my high school was simple. You go to the computer lab, hit CTRL + P on your computer, and—BAM!—it brings you to the printing screen; you adjust your settings to what you need, and click print. Simple. Easy. Intuitive. Here: not so much.
Instead of providing a widely-known printing system, we have Pharos. Now, in addition to being a pen and paper person, I am also not super tech savvy, so, when I discovered I had to download a SecurePrint program onto my personal computer, I knew I was done for. I can make my way around the basics such as that, but I had to turn to the CIT help forum which told me little to nothing. Alas, I figured out how to download something that honestly, felt like a virus onto my computer. I should also mention this took three hours to figure out.
Now, with my wonderful Pharos SecurePrint program, I can upload files to an internet link. Yay! I guess?
Anyway, I uploaded the calculus work to the site, which went smoother than I thought, I will admit. The next step then was finding a printer, and I had remembered seeing one in the ISC lounge. After 15-20 minutes of trying to figure out where to scan my ID, I had finally felt that I had it down until: the thing asked for a passcode. I tried putting in my campus portal password, which did not work. Naturally, I then sat down and looked it up on the internet.
I looked on the CIT webpage for it, but again—nothing. Great. After a while though, I found out what to do via a Reddit thread—yes, I said Reddit—I was truly at a low point. Through this, I figured out that I needed to generate a passcode with the Pharos portal. After doing that and probably about five-ish hours, I had finally printed my Calculus 1 classwork!
Now you must be thinking to yourself “this was the end of it,” I had it all figured out and everything was smooth sailing now, right? Wrong.
September 7th, 2023. I am, once again, printing out my Calculus I classwork. This time, the setting is Newton 204, waiting for my friends for a physics colloquium. I know there is a printer right out the door. As before, I upload the documents to the Pharos portal, and once again, that part is seamless. I then go to the printer, scan my ID and… the screen does not turn on. Out of desperation, I press the power button. The screen turns on and I read: The printer appears to be offline. Please contact an administrator. Wonderful.
Then, I go to try the printer in the ISC lounge—the ol’ tried and true. On this one, the screen comes up and I press the print button. The printer refuses to do anything—okay, cool—I decide to wait a little while, as I had class that night. Though a bit aggravated, I hold out hope.
Flashforward to approximately three hours later, and it is 11:30 at night. At this point, the union is the only place open, and I know that there are a few printers there. I throw on my vans and walk over to the union. Simple enough. I go upstairs where the printer is, scan my ID once again. It all is going fine and dandy—aside from the fact that the thing needs to restart—but at least it works. There goes another 15-20 minutes of the night, but my calculus work is finally printed out.
Ironically, we did not even do the classwork in class that day, but all of this is to say that I do not really get along well with the way printing works on this campus, and I think myself and fellow students would appreciate a more streamlined system.
Thumbnail via Kendall Cruise