Because of my awesome specialness, I've been chosen to transition to Gmail. OK, maybe I was randomly selected, I dunno. Anyway, I had finished marking my pile of midterms and was waiting to swap with my TA, so I had a bit of time and decided to go ahead and activate my UofA Gmail.
I'm not new to Gmail; I've been using it since the summer of '04. Back then, Gmail was in beta, and you could only get an account with an invitation which was very highly prized by Googlers. (Yup, I'm bragging: "I've been on Gmail since you were in elementary school, la-la-la.")
I got my invitation by promising to send a postcard about Edmonton to whoever sent me an invite. I sent out two postcards; one person stiffed me, but the other sent me an invitation. And...big whoop. It's email. I've been doing email since, well...I sent my first email in 1989 ("since you were in diapers, la-la-la"). I'm not crazy about Gmail's odd way of labeling messages instead of physically putting them in different folders. The concept of archiving everything and actually deleting nothing was novel, and getting a whopping 1GB of storage free at that time put Hotmail and Yahoo! to shame. But then there's the fact that it's web-based, and I'm pretty fond of my desktop email client (I love me my Thunderbird--the software, not the wine) because of its customizability and extensions.
Anyway, here's how my transition went: hair-pullingly bad. You have to change your password, which is a nuisance--now I've got to update account info and passwords in all my password-management software, argh! Next, I (apparently) wasn't able to change or update my existing account in Thunderbird--I had to set up a new one. That's a hassle. What about all of the email messages in my old account? (Turns out, you can request that they transition all of that over to your new Gmail account, but it could take "days or weeks".)
So OK, I set up Thunderbird to use IMAP, tried logging on, and got an error message. WTF? Did I not enter my new password correctly? Did I not enter all the server settings right? Argh! Turns out, I had to go to a Google webpage and enter a CAPTCHA, I guess to prove my human-ness. That would have been good to know in advance, AICT. So it's working, but now I have to sync all of my computers with Gmail's IMAP servers to download and reindex 25,000+ messages. That takes a little while. Like, hours.
If you don't or can't use an standalone email client, you can use the Gmail web interface. It's no different than regular Gmail. It is a bit of a pain if you already have a Gmail account, because now you have to log out of one account if you want to log in to the other account. And don't forget to update the info in your password-management software, which tends not to understand what's going on if you have two logons to the same website, argh!
Finally, after you change over to Gmail, there's no going back. You won't be able to log in to the old UofA webmail--it will fail. Eventually, though, everyone will have to transition; it's just a matter of time.
Is this a fabulous new experience? No. I had my email setup just the way I liked it, and now I've got to chase down bugs and get used to Gmail's weird labeling-instead-of-filing process. But this process was about saving money in the first place. And now we also get cool Google Apps like Calendar, Docs, and more. I've been using all those already ("since before you hit puberty, la-la-la"), but now everyone else gets to as well. Maybe we'll all be more productive. FYI, "Google ate my term paper" is not an acceptable excuse.
Why aren't you studying?
The Gmail
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Just as an FYI, in GMail you do have the option of either labeling the message OR moving the message. So while the labels on the left don't actually look like folders, you can indeed choose "move-to" and the message will not remain in your inbox.
Not sure about sub-folder though...
I am not looking forward to this transition. Do our email addresses stay the same or do we need to change those too?
@Anonymous (4:10/4:14): thanks for the tip. When I have time, I'll tweak my settings and monkey around with things some more.
@Anonymous (6:48): we all get to keep our old email addresses, so that won't change. And if you only used webmail--and will only use Gmail's webmail interface--I don't think the changeover will be too disruptive.
I have a lot more to manage than you--at least 10 years' worth of emails. But here's a thought: when you graduate, will you miss your ualberta.ca email address? Will you try to retain some messages?
off topic question: How hard is it to get into grad school in psychology? What is usually the minimum GPA to get in?
Thanks
The department websites usually have info on minimum gpa and other requirements....
@Anonymous: Although it's true that minimum GPAs are often posted, remember that you are in competition with a lot of other people. The Department will choose the best candidate, based on their overall profile.
I'm not involved enough in the process to tell you what you realistically need. Try talking to the Department's Graduate Program Assistant, who may be able to tell you the GPA range of this year's successful applicants.
Finally, if you're applying to a professional program (you want to be a practicing psychologist), I've heard the GPA requirement is really high. Really, really high.
Why have you not deleted emails from 10 years ago?
@Anonymous: Heh, because I don't have to. In the olden days, you had to empty your trash folder, or you'd run out of disk space. Not anymore.
It's surprising what I do refer back to, though. Maybe a former student has decided that they want to go to graduate school after working in the real world for a few years. It's nice to be able to go and see what kinds of questions they asked me (if any).
I have agendas and minutes of Department Council Meetings, too. Plus things like policy documents, memos, etc.
However, every year or so I do go through my trash and permanently delete stuff I know I'll never need.