How to cope when the Wi-Fi conks out

By Derek Baker, March 7 2017 — 

Last Friday, March 3 saw the University of Calgary’s wireless networks go down for the majority of the day — again. Frustration mounted as students were unable to connect their devices to Wi-Fi, bringing the school on the verge erupting into anarchic chaos. If the Wi-Fi ever crashes again — and let’s be real, it will — here are a few tips for how to deal with a day without Internet.

Remain calm: 

As your fruitless attempts to connect to either AirUC-Secure or eduroam come up short, panic may set in. However, you must accept that the network is down and that your device will not connect to the Internet today. It’s gonna be a long day of actually paying attention during lecture instead of being on Facebook. The sooner you can accept the situation, the better.

Make friends with rich people: 

Cell phones keep on getting more advanced. Schmooze up to a Haskayne business student trust-fund baby and leach off their Personal Hotspot. They might be the crappiest person ever, but this is the price to pay in order to tether onto their data plan.

Make a sacrifice to the Wi-Fi gods:

Legend has it that the ethereal force that is a Wi-Fi network can be beckoned with simple offerings. Set up an altar under a router to show your devotion to the Wi-Fi gods. Just a few drops of blood — preferably, your own — is enough to appease them, bestowing a full signal upon your laptop or phone for the remainder of the day.

Stay woke:

GIF Courtesy Tumblr

Sure, the Wi-Fi may say it’s “unable to connect at this time, please contact a server administrator” — but is the network really broken? Like, can we actually confirm that some router or server somewhere on campus is malfunctioning? Didn’t think so. The U of C probably shut down the wireless network to make us spend more printing money while we frantically print off the lecture slides at the TFDL before class. They’ll do anything to get us to spend another buck. Don your tinfoil hats, march up to administration and demand the truth. Nice try, Lizzie.

Just die:

Wi-Fi is the life force that powers every student. If we can’t connect to the Internet, can we even connect to reality? No. There’s no point, so I guess we might as well just die.