The Trials and Tribulations of an Average Binghamton Student

It’s been a long day. Your first class was at 1 PM, and that’s a little too early for you. It

was really hard too, being Accounting 101 and all. Overloaded with homework, you go to the library in the hopes of having your friends distract you from doing homework. Unfortunately, none of your friends are there, not even on the newly renovated third floor. Disappointed, you finally open your laptop to do some homework.

Eduroam, as expected, is just not working, so you’re forced to use welcome2bing. After navigating that fiasco, you finally open the login page to Brightspace. Only a few more steps…. Wow, is it getting warm in here? It feels like you’ve been working for forever… maybe you’ll go get some water and a snack from the vending machine.

One conversation with a random acquaintance from your high school later, you’re back at the desk, ready to log in. You type in your username. You type in your password. You press enter. And now… You have to enter your two-factor authentication number. Why. Why has this accursed school forced us to have to walk uphill both ways to school in the morning in the middle of a blizzard, with only a cold spoonful of poison in order to get to Brightspace? Why is everything hidden behind that accursed 2FA? You press the “E-MAIL ME” button. And you wait… for hours you wait. Stuck… at the whim of the internet gods to send you a singular notification. It feels like forever– oh… your wifi disconnected. You just never got the email… whoops… you reconnect to welcome2bing and finally you open that email. FINALLY you can type in that nonsensical series of numbers… 125054… oh– it took too long, you timed out and need to get a new email….

Maybe it’s time for a break. You go to Dunkin’, homework forgotten. A story all too

common these days at SUNY Binghamton.