Okay sometimes I love the internet and sometimes I really hate it, this is definitely my biggest love hate relationship. For the past few days my internet has been down!  And when you need the internet for school, work, bills, social connection and all the rest what do you do?

Well, that is what this post is all is all about, your vital tips to making sure that you don’t lose class work or a grade just because your internet went down!

When you rely on the internet for anything you must have a backup plan!!!

First of all in college you do have several things you can do so that you make sure you’re not left in a bind.

1 Print off your syllabus, keep this in a place where you can access it easily. The syllabus has all the information about your assignments and the contact information for your professor. Once you have trouble getting online contact your professor immediately and let them  know what’s happening.

2. Know where else you can access the internet.

• Work- check with your boss, let them know ahead of time if you’re taking an online class, and ask if they’d mind if you worked on your class during your lunch and breaks. A lot of employers will like the fact that you’re working on self improvement on your free time and this can look very favorable to you in a review.
• Library Many libraries have internet access for patrons, you’ll most likely need a valid library card, and there are time limits, but I’ve seen this extended for college work.
• Internet Café- Yes you do have to pay for these but in a pinch they can be great until you get your service back up and running like you really need it to.
• Starbucks- Now some Starbucks want you to have a WI-FI account with a carrier such as At & T before you can use the service. However, a cheap AT& T prepaid card would be a great thing to keep handy for emergencies.
• Cell Phone- See if your cell phone carrier as a card that will work with your computer so that if your main source of internet connection goes down you have a back up one.
• Network your house, this way if the internet does go out, depending on why it went down you’ll still have access to the internet.
• Panera Bread- Many of these restaurants have free WI-FI, as long as you get a cup of coffee, tea, or something small. Also they ask that you respect their busy hours and don’t stay on for more than a half an hour during peak busy times.

3. Plan to do as much of your homework and etc offline, and back up everything with a portable storage device, either a back up tower, the mini ones will fit in a medium size purse. Or have a USB device with your work saved on it so if you need to use one of your back up plans for the internet your homework is not stuck on the hard drive of say your PC, and you need to send your work in.

A couple of times I had my internet go out when I was taking online classes.

4. Here was my back up plan- What helped me the most was knowing that I had to be online for class discussion only three times during the week, and I needed to read the lecture which I often printed out, and respond to questions from the professor during those three times. And since I often did my homework offline the only other time I had to be online was to turn in my assignment and since that was a simple download of what I’d been working on I could minimize my time online and thus any outside cost.

Typically these questions were based on the lecture so having the printed version, generally about 5-8 pages really helped. I could respond to the questions with several sentences and then be off line in about 15 minutes.

Some Colleges- Now some colleges require you to be online for specific periods of time, and in this case make sure to contact the professor and find out if there is something you can do to make up the time you have to be on for. Ask for an extra credit assignment. This will let them know you are serious and will do whatever necessary to keep your grade high. And perhaps they won’t make you complete an extra assignment but when you initiate this request this will often go a long way with professors, and they will in turn work with you.

Now this worked during the traditional class periods, for the midterm or final week I had to make sure that I had more time so I needed to use the internet café, etc. go when it was least busy and make sure that the people running the café know that I would be online for hours for the final. Often this is not a problem as long as you let them know, but paying a few dollars for internet café time is so worth it to save your grade!!

I hope you found this helpful… please share this… re-tweet, Digg it and let me know what you think. This blog is for you and I really want to make sure I’m answering your questions.

Sophie

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