Online is fragile
Today I opened my university's Canvas and attempted to take a quiz.
The quiz did not load. Instead, I saw a ransom note from the hackers who have been attacking Canvas.
Frustrated, I watched the due date of my quiz come and go with no way to submit anything. It isn't even guaranteed I'll be able to submit the last coursework and exams I have this semester, since it isn't clear when the attack will end.
I should have backed up all of my course readings offline, but instead, I just accessed them online when I needed to. Now I can't access them at all, and I don't even have a list of readings to find elsewhere, because the course syllabus is only on the Canvas I can't access anymore.
Luckily I only have a few classes on Canvas, the rest are either on different platforms or have bespoke course websites. I've actually been annoyed about this before, since it means I have to check half a dozen websites to put due dates in my agenda, but I'm grateful for it now.
Still, this made me realize I take the Internet for granted. It's convenient to do my homework wherever I want and only carry my laptop around instead of multiple notebooks. But if the tradeoff is moments like this, where I'm refreshing a website every few minutes hoping it'll magically fix itself, I'm not sure it's so convenient anymore.