Work/ School Balance

As an online college student, there are a few crucial things: a working computer, a functional printer, good snacks, caffeine, and the internet. When one of those is missing it’s almost earth-shattering. A lot of those items on the list can be remedied with a trip to the store. I’ve made a quick trip to BJs when my printer stopped working and I’ve driven over an hour to Best Buy to pick up my new Apple computer. I have made quick trips to Starbucks and the grocery store for snacks and coffee. The one thing you can’t run to the store for is the internet.

I woke up yesterday to that Wi-Fi signal missing from my phone. I didn’t panic because, for some unknown reason, I decided the night before to print what I needed for my annotated bibliography. I had worked on the search for my topics and decided to go ahead and print them so I had them for the next day.

There was a bad storm raging with flooding and strong winds so I figured everything would be up and running in the afternoon. I pulled out my highlighter and downloaded some shows on my iPad using my hotspot. I was set and relaxed.

By lunch, things were still down. My mom checked Mediacom for outages and let’s face it, a lot of these internet companies seem to have issues keeping a good signal or whatever they do. It wasn’t them. For once I couldn’t blame them.

I called the company that made my router and did some troubleshooting with them. Twenty minutes and $170 later, I had internet that worked better than it had in a long time. I also now have 2 years of device support under Netgear.

Here’s the bad thing about all of this, I’ve had this happen to me so many times that I have a plan and I stopped freaking out about it. I pay for a hotspot on my phone for when this happens. I also have a sister who doesn’t live that far away and doesn’t care if I use her internet.

This is unfortunately the life of both a writer and a college student. You need internet for both and your whole world stops when you don’t have it. There are times I question the reliance we have on technology. There are times I take a break from it if I can. But then I’m watching a movie and have to know who a certain person is and what else they’ve been in that I’ve seen.