I’m not even going to try to keep calm for this. So here’s your warning. Please keep away from small children. There’s no need to corrupt the youth for this one. There’s the content warning, let’s get on with it then.
If I get automatically logged out and forced to log back in with Arcadia’s One Time Passcode system while writing this piece, I’m dropping out and you’ll never read this. We’ve been dealing with this shit for almost a year now and every time it asks for a new “one time” code another piece of me dies. Apparently “one time” means “2 hours” because I’ll be working on something and I’ll be miraculously signed out. It’s not even like I was inactive, I could be typing a paper and the PortalGuard gods will go “fuck you in particular,” and sign me out before saving my work. I can’t even tell you how many times it’s happened.
It would make sense to me if we had to use the code in the morning and it would last us 24 hours or something, but clearly that is not what happens. I don’t know if it’s programmed to be a pain in the ass or if it’s just grown sentient, but I think it has easily been the worst part of my college experience. That says something too, because I went to school online through a global pandemic.
I can already hear the adults who graduated in another generation going, “Oh boo hoo your gadgets don’t work, I didn’t need them to graduate. Wahhh wahh *annoying bitch noises*” I have only one thing in response; shut up. No one asked. It’s a different world now, and honestly I wouldn’t have wanted to lug around the first Macintosh or whatever dinosaur you thought was going to poison our brains in the 80s. We can talk once you realize that no one gives a shit about those “How long did it take you to find the hidden emoji?” Facebook posts.
Anyways, it would be a different story if it wasn’t called a “one time” passcode. The fact that I have to read “one time” after I have typed a different code 17 times in one day is infuriating. There have been times where I will look at that accursed login screen and contemplate every bit of my life. It’ll start simple with questions like, “what if I just throw this laptop at the wall?” Then, they’ll get deeper. “What if I drop out?” “Why does our culture require a degree from higher education to even be considered for a job?” “Why do I need a job?” “What if I don’t want to just work the rest of my life?” “What’s the meaning of life?” “What if I just didn’t exist?” You get the picture.
I don’t know who is in charge of the passcode system, but if you’re by chance reading this, please end our suffering. Get rid of this one time passcode bullshit. Free us from this permanent state of agony. The only thing this PortalGuard is guarding is the path to my sanity. In fact, that path gets further away every time I see that damn sign-in screen. If you can’t just get rid of the whole system, then at least change the name. Calling it a “one time” passcode feels like a slap in the face with a chair that just so happens to be made of steel. As if the computer, the program, and the developers are all laughing at me as I huff and puff while looking for the passcode. It’s fucking enraging.
This next message is for the bitch hacker that forced Arcadia to use this system in the first place. Fuck you. I hope both sides of your pillow are warm. I hope your coffee burns your tongue when you take the first sip, then I hope it’s cold the next time you try a sip. I hope when you put your socks on they’re rotated just a bit so it’s uncomfortable. Then I hope once you get them fixed, you step in a wet spot and have to repeat the process. I hope you stub your toes every time you walk around a table. I hope your sleeves roll down while you’re washing your hands. If you have a pet, I hope it runs to a carpet to throw up rather than on an easy to clean floor. I hope you never again get to fully sneeze or yawn. I hope you never use the right side of a USB when trying to plug it in. I hope you hit every red light every time you’re driving. I hope your crush calls you bro. I hope you have an itch in places that you can’t reach. I hope whatever you are watching buffers every other frame. And of course, I hope there’s always snow on your driveway no matter how much you shovel it.
Wow! It looks like I made it through the full piece without getting logged ou–
Featured image created to Nik Shuliahin via Unsplash
