As a junior in high school, looking towards my future is something that is very important, especially this year. Something that I have to focus on when looking forward is college, including college classes—which I’m taking this year. First semester, I took a college course (SENCAP) offered through Southeast Community College. I know countless peers that are also registered in one or more SENCAP classes, which are entirely online and worked on in our school library. This means that my peers and I are dependent upon the school’s wifi to allow us to complete our work during the 50-minute period we are given each day, and it can be very frustrating when I can’t get anything done because of weak or glitchy wifi, which is something that the entire school has experienced multiple times this year. Because of this, my eyes have been opened to the fact that strong, reliable wifi should be accessible to everyone.
When I go into the library and sit down to work on my next assignment for my college class, I’m ready to get as much done as possible. But when I realize the wifi is down once again, it’s really annoying because now I can’t get anything done—not only do we now have to spend time at home completing those assignments but we also have to figure out what to do with the time that is now wasted. I understand how irritating weak wifi can be with only one SENCAP class, so I understand it must be more frustrating for my other peers who take two or even three classes online, especially when I plan on taking more in the future. Not having great wifi wouldn’t be as annoying if it was only one or two days throughout the semester, but this past semester, the wifi was down multiple days in a row for multiple weeks in a row.
SENCAP courses aren’t the only classes affected by wifi. Many of my other classes, around three-fourths of them, are online in some way, shape or form—if not entirely, then the material is online while the rest of the class is still in-person. One example is my science class. Although we do hands-on labs and worksheets sometimes, most of our tests and assignments or notebook pages are through Google forms, on the Chromebook, which needs wifi to work. With lack of wifi, the page can’t load or submit.
While that example is just one class, as I mentioned before, a majority of my classes have materials online, so it’s difficult for teachers to switch their online assignments to paper versions on the flip of a dime. It can be especially hard for them when paper copies need to be made for the entire class they’re teaching. I’ve been in classes multiple times where teachers are unable to print our assignment because the printer in the copier room runs off wifi, making assignments unavailable.
I’ve heard people say that we should just go back to paper copies of everything because problems like weak wifi won’t arise, which might be true. But paper isn’t the best option anymore because of the time we’re in, where a majority of places are straying away from paper. Everyone is leaning more towards computers because they use less resources than what goes into printed copies. As time goes on and things evolve, it’s important to keep up with the times and use our resources wisely. As a result, the real solution here is to ensure that we have strong wifi. I know that wifi access hasn’t only been an issue at Yutan, but at other schools too. Speaking of, I’ve heard that there is a bill that should help states make internet access more available. I just hope that this bill can really help so that we can have better wifi, especially since almost everything is online.
Overall, I think we can all agree that having access to strong wifi is extremely important. Since things are now online more than they were in the past, bad connections make everyday life more difficult for people that use wifi daily, like students and teachers. While I know wifi hasn’t been a problem at just Yutan, but other places as well, I think it really does matter to have good wifi. And even though there haven’t been as many problems so far this semester, I think we can all at least start to understand how important strong wifi is. There will be plenty of other obstacles for us students to overcome as we chase our future goals, and the wifi shouldn’t be one of them.
