This is a basic post, but sometimes it surprises me the number of people unaware of the computing resources available to employees off campus, so I thought I'd catalog them over the next few posts. Today's post is about email.
You can view your recent and new email messages via the web at webmail.allegheny.edu. What you're seeing is the email that hasn't been deleted from the server yet. Email at Allegheny is set to delete from the server for employees two days after it has been read on your office PC, so you'll see email dating back to two days before your last check at work, plus any new messages that have come in. Webmail also has relatively recently added functionality of being able to store sent email, but this is only email sent via webmail.
Also, some important settings are under Options. If you want to have webmail delete messages permanently (to save yourself from having to re-read them in the office), you can set that. The other three checkboxes, I really recommend checking. This will store deleted messages in the trash, store sent messages in "Sent", and empty your trash when you exit. (This last bit is critical to deleting messages permanently - they never get deleted if you don't empty your webmail trash!)
I try to only dip into webmail when I want to get ahead of my email from home. I am kind of a home is home, work is work type, so my method of staying sane doesn't normally include checking email from home. But if yours does, webmail is a somewhat functional way of doing that.