Millersville students were surprised Friday when they tried to open their e-mail. They encountered this message:

Marauder Mail is still unavailable. Information Technology staff continues to work closely with vendor support; our case has been escalated to highest tier support.

Faculty and staff are aware of the outage. We will provide further updates tomorrow morning.

The above was all that was seen on Millersville’s Current Students page after Marauder mail had been down for five days.

The recent failure of Millersville’s Marauder e-mail this past week, while frustrating, might be a blessing in disguise, almost like vacation.

There is almost no reason to get on the computer at all except to Facebook where you can still talk to your friends, and you don’t have to respond to anything your professors might have sent you. But only if the e-mail blackout only lasts for a few days, after that, much like when vacation is over, it is time to return to reality and get things done.

But if the e-mail black out had continued, those with pending questions for professors about homework, or other important issues would have been forced to rely on the old fashioned system called a telephone to get their questions answered.

And those with no other alternate e-mail account would have had to go through the process of picking a new screen name with another email provider like Gmail or Yahoo to get their work done.

The e-mail outage proved that some people cannot live without e-mail, while others can. Some continuously refreshed the page, hoping that their e-mail would load with the next click.

Other people didn’t worry about it, or had other modes of communication with their professors, such as Blackboard. Some professors even have Facebook groups for their classes.