In college, a majority of students’ workload is done online. Whether it’s an online course, a web seminar, class materials, tutoring videos, or online homework, nearly every class has some aspect online. Not to mention Texas A&M’s partnering with ecampus to post grades and content for courses and information portal, Howdy, are online. So with such a large majority of the university’s informational and educational systems being online, why is the Wi-Fi the worst thing Texas A&M has to offer?

I struggle every single day with my Wi-Fi connection, which in turn results in lost productivity and a loss of focus in my classes. Three times a week, my class schedule has me going to three classes back to back to back with roughly 20 minutes in between to transition to different buildings.

When I get to each class I have about five minutes or less to get my materials set up for the new class. I do not turn off my laptop in between classes because I need it for each and it would take too long to restart before each class. However, in the 15-minute walk between class (in which I stay on campus and just switch from one building to another, all which are rather close) my computer disconnects from the Wi-Fi and refuses to reconnect once in the new building.

This has become the most frustrating part of my day because I have to sit there and wait for 10 minutes and sometimes even restart my computer to get the Wi-Fi to reconnect. By that point, the professor is 10 minutes into the lecture and I am behind and distracted, causing me to miss content.

And that describes a good day. There are some days when from the moment I get on campus to the moment I get off I cannot get a consistent Wi-Fi signal if even get one at all. There are “dead zones” that every student knows about and constantly complains about. For me, it is in my classroom in Blocker. I have not once this semester been able to connect to the Wi-Fi in that room.

The only thing that keeps me sane on days like that is knowing that I get to go home to a consistent, high speed, Wi-Fi connection. But not everyone gets that luxury. Students who live on campus have to rely on this unreliable Wi-Fi signal for everything. This is especially stressful when having to take online quizzes, test, or register for classes; these are all time-sensitive things and the fact that the Wi-Fi could drop out at any point makes me more nervous than the actual test itself.

Last year, when I lived on campus as a freshman, I relied on the campus Wi-Fi. However, when it would go out, I would have to switch to using data on my phone. This made my mother irritated because I would use up all the family data for the month resulting in over-usage fees. It was a continued month to month occurrence, which eventually resulted in having to change to a more expensive unlimited plan. And since that point, the Wi-Fi has only gotten worse.

The university also prohibits setting up person Wi-Fi hotspots which makes accessing the internet that much tougher for students. What happens when I’m on campus trying to turn in an online assignment at 11:55 when its due at 11:59 and the Wi-Fi will not connect? I’m well aware I should not have procrastinated, but let’s be real everyone does it and it got done, so now I would like to get credit for my time and effort, but the Wi-Fi is crushing my dreams and probably my grade.

I’m not sure what the exact reason for this issue is, but if I had to guess I would predict it has something to do with the increased populous. As pretty much everyone at the university knows, Texas A&M has an initiative called 25 by 25. The goal of this is to increase the number of engineering students to 25,000 by 2025.

While I support this initiative and think that it is achievable, I do not think the university is as prepared as they think. With an increase in students, there is an increase in Wi-Fi users that the server/system is not prepared to handle thus causing issues. I’m sure there are more than just this factor going into the Wi-Fi complications on campus, but I strongly believe this has contributed in some form.

Texas A&M does a lot of things great and that’s why the university is able to gain so much support and has an increased rate of interested students, but I can confidently say Wi-Fi is not something that is selling people on the greatness of the university. There are thousands of students complaining whether it is in the form of comedic Twitter memes or serious complaints to administration, so my question is why has this not been fixed or even addressed seriously yet?