For students, faculty, and staff, the beginning of a new academic year feels like a fresh start. New classes, new faces, and new opportunities.

For those of us working in technology, it feels a little different.

It feels like the Super Bowl.

While many campuses slow down during the summer, IT departments rarely do.

Summer is when computer labs get refreshed. Devices are replaced and imaged. Networks are upgraded. Servers are patched. Classroom technology is installed. Software is updated. Security improvements are deployed. Systems are integrated. Accounts are prepared.

And then there are the projects we deliberately save for summer.

The intrusive ones.

The projects where someone says, "We really can't do this while classes are in session."

Those few weeks become our opportunity to make major changes while minimizing the impact on teaching and learning.

Then comes August.

Faculty return. Students start logging in. Tickets increase. Classrooms are checked one more time. Systems are tested.

And somewhere, something that worked perfectly all summer decides the first morning of classes is the perfect time to stop working.

That's when the real test begins.

A classroom computer that worked Friday refuses to cooperate Monday.

A password doesn't work.

A vendor discovers an issue at exactly the wrong time.

A system experiences a load nobody saw during testing.

Someone walks into the Help Desk with a problem nobody has ever seen before and needs it fixed five minutes ago.

And IT professionals do what they always do.

Figure it out.

That's one of the strange things about working in IT. Some of our greatest successes are completely invisible.

Nobody celebrates when the network stays online.

Nobody sends an email because authentication worked.

Nobody notices thousands of devices receiving their policies correctly.

Nobody knows about the outage that almost happened but was prevented.

When technology works, people simply get to do their jobs.

That quiet success is something every technology professional should be proud of.

So, as Fall 2026 approaches, good luck to my fellow IT professionals across higher education and K-12.

To the help desk technicians taking the calls. The desktop teams refreshing classrooms. The network and systems teams keeping everything connected and running. The application teams keeping data flowing. The cybersecurity professionals watching everything in the background. And the technology leaders trying to keep all those moving pieces pointed in the same direction.

The next few weeks will bring unexpected problems, strange tickets, vendor surprises, and probably at least one issue with a ridiculously simple cause.

But there will also be thousands of quiet successes.

Students will log in.

Faculty will teach.

Classrooms will come alive.

Systems will work.

And another academic year will begin.

For most of the campus, it's the first day of school.

For IT?