It is nearly 2am, I have been hitting homework steadily since about 10 pm and finally the end is in sight. The only thing that stands between me and my bed is putting the finishing touches on one paper and editing the other. With victory in sight, I go to my laptop, click my web browser and hit the MyMillikin tab in favorites.

Surprise! The email page doesn’t load. The loading wheel just keeps circling, trying in vain to load a page that will never load. I refused to accept defeat. I closed out of my browser, reopened MyMillikin, clicked the email icon and received another loading wheel. My next step is to disconnect and reconnect to the Resnet because I sometimes get a dropped signal in my room. Once again, I am greeted by the loading wheel, and it just keeps spinning and spinning. Meanwhile, the paper that is patiently waiting to be edited and uploaded to Moodle is in my inbox amongst junkmail from Groupon and annoying forum replies.

Disbelief. This cannot be happening right now. I tab over, hit Google and the page loads flawlessly. Still sure that it’s the internet’s fault, I type in Facebook and yet another flawlessly loaded page. I try my email again: nothing. I get distracted. I scroll through some posts about Buzzfeed quizzes and some videos of animals doing miscellaneous cute things. I tab back to MyMillikin, click the email icon, still loading… so back to Facebook I go. This is absolutely frustrating, but I take the Facebook break in stride. Sometimes college is so hard.

After about 20 minutes of mindless scrolling, I tab back to MyMillikin and my email, still nothing. I scream out in frustration, “Why?” I made that last part up, but after a half hour of trying, I wanted to throw myself to my knees and scream. Determined to finish this paper, I try to ride out the storm by mindlessly browsing the internet, following links across the World Wide Web. I kill major time wasting my night away like this. When I check back probably an hour later, I open a fresh tab, enter MyMillikin, click the email icon and get the wheel. Only this time, the wheel is only just there for a few seconds! Voila, the Heavens parted and a beautiful light shone on my email. I like to call this moment “dawn.” Just kidding, it wasn’t quite that early yet.

In the moment and with so many failed attempts behind me, I am relieved to see the email sitting just where I thought it was, and at the same time I was exhausted by the ordeal. After several brief moments, I decided the editing could wait until morning, and by morning I mean the time my alarm was scheduled to go off in four hours.

I was so frustrated, but upon reflection, I have decided that this is thoroughly a first world problem. It wasn’t like I was totally out of the internet, (which is still solely a first world problem) I just needed my email to work. I have expected it to work every other time so when it didn’t and I needed it, I was mad. Your Millikin email isn’t worth getting that mad over. Procrastination got the better of me this time around.