Like I'd said in a previous post, one of the interesting things about Urbana as a staff is that you actually have 2 jobs. One of those jobs is taking care of your students if you have any there. The other job is your Urbana job, which is what you actually do for the conference. Staff are required to average working 8 hours a day for 5 days, meaning if your primary job doesn't have enough hours in it (i.e., working in the Pan Asian North American Student Lounge from 12-6 for 4 days), they give you another job to make sure you have enough hours. My second job actually started first, which was working Solutions for Urbana Registration.
Solutions is an interesting place. The term seems pleasant but really what happens is that anytime something goes wrong with someone's registration, they come to us to hope that we can provide a "solution" to their problem. Some times the job was simple, nametags were printed incorrectly or someone's name wasn't in the system because they hadn't completed their registration. Usually, the solution provided was that they still owed some money and they didn't know it. I joked with some of my coworkers that we had a tough job because everyone comes to us frazzled from travel but at least it's better than working Housing Solutions; with us, they just owe money. With them, they don't have a place to stay.
Honestly, I really enjoyed working Solutions. The team was great, the job was easy enough (once you got the hang of the computer system) and I really enjoyed solving problems for people. Folk were usually a little frazzled coming in, like we'd anticipated, but by the end of their time with us, their problems had been solved and everything was good. Just in case, I also had a bag of candy in front of my station so folk could snack while we fixed their stuff. I even got to be a part of a really cool Urbana registration story.
The first night of registration it was raining like crazy so everyone was coming in wet and a little tense. Someone donated their overcharge to Urbana, meaning we could use it if a participant came in dire need of some scholarship. About an hour later, two missionaries to China came to solutions not sure what to do. Someone told them Urbana was great so they signed up and paid the deposit when they registered but didn't know how much the conference as a whole cost. It was going to run them $360 EACH to come. I could tell that if we didn't do something, they were probably going to leave. Thankfully, we had that overcharge and were able to give one of them a full scholarship! Praise Jesus for his provision!
In conclusion, Solutions really was a lot of fun. I put my name in next year to have it as my Urbana job again. Here's hoping we get to solve more of the world's (or at least the conference's) problems. =0).
Have an excellent day!
~Adam
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