Raising the bar

By Brittany Carava
FEATURE EDITOR
@brittcarava

I feel like with most things in life, I have gotten pretty lucky; I can win a card game that is based on luck, I attend a wonderful school with an amazing system of family and friends and the list can go on about how #blessed I am.There is just one thing that I seem to not be so lucky with: cell phone service.There’s no denying that this is a first world problem. However, for the last four years I seem to always get stuck in a dorm room that is either super far away from the router or is just in a basement-like cement fortress.

Don’t get me wrong, I absolutely love my phone and the ability to text or call friends from all over the country as well as my friends studying abroad. I just seem to always be stuck in situations where my phone does not want to cooperate. From my tiny little office at work at the Del Mar Racetrack to the first few years of living in my most recent childhood home, the Sprint network has not been very reliable.I remember my freshman year living in Maher and having to make phone calls in the side stairwell near the fire escape, just to get a little service. I had to lay just in the right spot on my bed in Palomar in the Vistas and it’s been the same way with the past two years in San Buen in the Valley.

Your answer to this quandary might be, “Turn on WiFi!”. However, as I mentioned before, I’m always the end room or just farthest away from the router. I also feel that I have had a history of horrible cell phone batteries as well, so therefore using WiFi drains my phone.

Not only is the constant search for service annoying, it is also incredibly inconvenient when trying to get a hold of someone to make plans or stay connected during an important conversation. Many parents and older relatives may say that cellphones are causing our generation to lose connection with our peers, however in reality I feel that I am losing connection because my phone itself is not functioning properly.

After all this griping about cell phone service, I have to remind myself how lucky I am to have this type of technology in the first place, even if it means having to walk a little bit out of my way to find a good connection.