Students in I.T.

This past summer, while most students were enjoying vacations, beach trips, and late night snack runs to the gas station, a select few students and staff members remained in school. 

A part of this group was Emily Johnson. Johnson spent most of her summer break working for the IT Department across all six of Flour Bluff’s campuses. 

Emily Johnson is a senior at Flour Bluff High School this year. Johnson has been a Hornet since Pre-K, and when she saw an opportunity to give back to the school she loves so much while simultaneously saving up money, she jumped at it.

“I've been going to the school so long that I felt like it would be helpful to the school and I have been saving money towards a car so it was perfect for that and now I have about two thousands in savings to get my own car,” said Johnson. 

Not only was Johnson ecstatic for the opportunity, the application process was also fairly straightforward and easy. 

“So I discovered it on Indeed and then from there it took me to the school's application website. I found it actually the day it was posted and applied the next day so I was the first person to apply for the job. It was pretty easy for the most part. I did write a cover letter but most of it was just filling out the simple questions and going over background check information,” said Johnson. 

However, the work that had to be done once Johnson secured the job wasn’t quite as quick and easy as the application process. There was lots of repairing, relabeling, and relocating that had to be done to Flour Bluff’s technological devices. 

“We inventoried all the Chromebooks on all the campuses. We sticker-ed them with the numbers that you see. We repaired Chromebooks. We built parts for the new kind of smart board displays over at the younger campuses,” said Johnson. 

Yet, Johnson didn’t merely reapply stickers to each and every chromebook on campus, she also got to learn about the inner mechanics of the computers students use everyday.

“Repairing Chromebooks for sure. That was a lot of fun, especially whenever we got to repair things like keyboards and get to see the insides of the Chromebooks and learn more about the inner workings,” said Johnson when asked what the most memorable part of the job was.

After this summer job, Johnson has a newfound respect for the IT Department and all of the things they go through in order to fix the school’s computers. 

“I learned a lot more about how Chromebooks work and also how much damage happens from students. Seeing like there was at least 200 Chromebooks damaged at the high school alone that we had to pull out ourselves and then in the system mark them as like what was wrong with them and the crazy things that kids do to Chromebooks like putting gum in there or just like ripping parts of the screen to stick things in there,” said Johnson

Despite this, Johnson still had Flour Bluff in mind when completing her tasks. Johnson says the most rewarding part of working for the school’s IT Department was watching all of her hard work fall into place. 

“Probably like at the end, seeing how everything was going to work for all of the campuses, especially with the inventorying, it took like one week total just at the high school alone. So knowing that it'd be right in the system, because also most of the system was kind of messed up because teachers move Chromebooks around. So then it's like you open the cart, this one says it goes to a completely different cart across the school. So we were able to fix all that so that for the IT department, finding the stuff will be easier,” said Johnson. 

Lastly, Johnson leaves a piece of advice to students who are looking to apply for this job or a similar job next summer.

“I would say just make sure you have teachers that you're close with or especially like Mr. Purdy. I've had a really good recommendation there so like make sure you have good relationships with teachers because you did have to have at least three recommendations, not recommendations, but references. And teachers are going to put on there since they communicate with the school,” said Johnson.