The Insufferable Loss of WiFi
Three days in a post-apocalyptic world and the light at the end of the tunnel.
The three worst words a stressed out college student in the midst of midterms could possibly read: no internet connection. These words flashed across my screen last Monday night, inexplicably adding the bitter frosting to my moldy-cupcake of a week. After a frustrating routine of unplugging and resetting, I had nothing. The red error light mocked me with its incessant blinking.
blink. I’m going to make you fail your midterms. blink. HA. blink.
The irony of the situation settled in as my first instinct was to broadcast my struggles over Facebook. I instantly felt ridiculous for it.
I tried one last reset for posterity, clutching the router in my hands and willing it to work. Red lights. Again. Clearly I still haven’t received my letter from Hogwarts.
I should have expected this. The culmination of subtle signs from the universe telling me to give up, jump in the car, and head West. And on Monday night I almost gave in.
Yet.
My steely resolve to not let the universe win prevailed, and I packed my bags and headed to the library. I grumpily set up shop at a table neatly nestled between the stacks and a window, relishing in the power outlet just two feet away. In that moment I hated how my life had become ruled by the amount of battery life left on my various electronic devices.
I conjured every bit of information I could from the World Wide Web before admitting defeat around midnight. As I headed home I wondered how long this atrocity would last. Could I possibly be stuck in an Internet-less black hole for more than 24 hours? I shuddered at the thought of an indefinite hold on my home WiFi capabilities and prayed for mercy from the cable gods, knowing my efforts were hopelessly futile.
The next morning brought a frightening realization: until further notice I would not be able to study from the comforts of my cozy couch. I must venture among the masses and brave the crowded, midterm-minded, WiFi-enabled campus. Endlessly searching through a myriad of occupied study rooms and waging my way through hoards of overly caffeinated college kids sounded about as good as multiple, simultaneous root canals. But I was determined to make this work! I would not be drowned out by the deafening midterm roar! I suited up in my finest stretchy mom jeans, and after a brief pep talk that may or may not have included listening to Katy Perry’s “Roar” three times, I headed to campus. Weary eyed and somewhat emotionally stunted, yet resolved to keep fighting, I settled into a quite corner to work.
Day One Without WiFi
…concluded somewhat like the end of Titanic, when Rose screams “don’t let go, Jack!” Except in this scenario, I’m Rose and Jack is my sanity. Or perhaps I’m Jack and Rose is my sanity, and I’m the one that slowly sinks to the bottom of the frigid ocean as my sanity longingly looks on from the surface. Regardless, my sanity was only a fleeting memory by Tuesday night.
I stumbled home in a Literary Theory induced stupor only to find that I could not relieve my hyper-extended brain with a Facebook/Tumblr/Funny-Internet-Gifs-Involving-Cats reprieve. Mixed with the fact that my neighborhood resides in the middle of a cell-phone reception pit-of-nothingness, I felt utterly disconnected from the world. A post-apocalyptic universe had replaced my reality and I was now metaphorically wandering the streets of a zombie-filled New York City, Will Smith style (except the empty streets were the internet and I was really just a less bad-ass and perhaps more crazy version of Will Smith). After I frantically reassured my roommates that I was in fact still alive and functioning quite well (they glared back with unconvinced faces), I fell asleep pleading to the universe to send me WiFi so that I could start feeling human again.
Day Two Without WiFi
The dawn of a new day brought with it the glimmering possibility that order would be restored to my now-fractured world. The cable company assured us they would arrive sometime before 10AM to fix the problem, and I left for class with a cheery disposition and the hope that I could shortly return home to continue my marathon study session from the safety of my own bed.
I tripped over a rock five steps from my door and spilled my coffee on my shirt. That should have been my first clue.
And soon enough my Wednesday went from manageable to atrocious. After a nearly-failed midterm and two long hours at work in the library dungeon, I was informed that the cable guy would not be arriving until after 4PM (if at all). A piece of my soul shriveled up and drifted away at the thought of another night studying on campus, surrounded by the absent-minded, ghost-like remains of the post-midterm student body.
I begrudgingly climbed the steps of the Student Learning Center center, wincing at the thought of so much forced social interaction. The SLC was a hub for impromptu, awkward encounters and terribly mistimed social gatherings. Don’t mind me, I’m only trying to memorize decades of extremely abstract literary theory and criticism, please continue yelling at your friend across the room about how drunk you were last night, I’d really love to hear all about the bad decisions you made.
After a few hours of careful concentration, I looked up just as the clock hit 4. Finally, my moment of salvation had arrived and I could exit this introvert’s nightmare I had stumbled into.
I anxiously awaited the news from my roommates. 20 mins passed. I grew increasingly worried that there was a more permanent problem with the internet. My imagination ran wild with “what if” scenarios. What if I could never use the internet at my house again? What if the was ending right now and I was forced to spend my last few precious minutes of life surrounded by incompetent, babbling strangers?
I had already mentally invested in a celebratory trip through the Starbucks drive-through once I received word that WiFi was back in business. And if it could not be fixed, well then I would probably fall to the ground in defeat and wait for the after-hours janitors to find my hopelessly malnourished body. I prayed for the former.
The Light At The End Of The Tunnel
That lovely tri-tone beep brought me back to reality.
Wednesday, September 25th, 4:34 PM: “Ladies, we have WiFi”.
I had never felt so much joy from a simple text message. My exuberant cheers resonated across the room, a final “take that, world!” emanated through the walls. Sweet, sweet salvation had arrived. I quickly packed up my things and ran for the door, pushing my way toward that light at the end of the tunnel, the sun pouring through the windows that reassured me I had survived this catastrophic event.
As I drove home, I reflected upon the past week, noting how the inconvenient lack of WiFi drastically disrupted my comfortable little world. I marveled at how something so simple could offset everything I know and do. Perhaps I was just being dramatic. But in that moment, I really felt the weight of my somewhat pathetic dependence on wireless internet access. I was the full-blown embodiment of the technology-addicted millennial and I realized I had become a slave to the tool that was supposed to make my life easier. For the first time I could understand how the tech-savvy youth of my generation had come to be labeled as overly entitled and idealistic. I felt it was my right to have reliable internet access, and I was uncontrollably angry when it was inexplicably taken away.
I eventually came home to congratulatory applause. My roommates joked that I only crawled back out of my hole to see them now that the WiFi was functioning properly. They might not have been completely wrong. My three day visit to this post-apocalyptic world left me mentally fatigued and somewhat emotionally scarred. At the end of the day, the introvert in me rejoiced in the quit solitude of my own room, relishing the freedom which the invaluable WiFi afforded. Yet, the duration of that hellish week brought out a side of me that typically hides behind the curtain. The metaphoric shadow to my outer-self, quietly following along but never interjecting. The extrovert that was thrust forward and interpolated into reality.
And through this somewhat overly-dramatized catastrophic event, I now possess the knowledge of this ‘other world’; the displacing alternate universe that showed me the ‘real’ side of human interaction and offered me a refracted image of my inner-consciousness and its jumbled contents.
Sometimes, we must lose something valuable in order to stumble upon something we never knew we possessed in the first place.
And sometimes it’s just really freaking annoying when the WiFi goes out.
