I was very happy today, very happy indeed. All of that changed dramatically, however, when I attempted to boot up my laptop in order to log into my account at St. Petersburg College. I had recently sent the online adviser an e-mail asking them to please review my official transcript to make certain that I've completed all of the requirements for my associate in arts degree before I officially apply for graduation. In order to receive my degree, the school requires that I make an official application for graduation, and to apply I will actually have to pay the school a fee. You may understand that there's no way I'm paying that fee until I know for certain that I will graduate at the end of the summer semester.

So I opened my laptopn and pressed the "power on" button and the computer started making some noise, but nothing ever appeared on the screen. After about 10 or 15 minutes of rebooting and rebooting, I came to the conclusion that the machine was coming up, but the display is apparently dead. I confirmed this by connecting an external monitor to the laptop.

Ugh.

This is a problem. While I can limp along now with an external monitor, in the long run having a laptop that doesn't include a working screen probably defeats the entire purpose of having a laptop. The bigger issue is that I think I may have found one of the most problematic things you may ever encounter as a distance learning student: what happens when you don't have a working computer? In my case, all is not lost because I have the monitor and I also have several other laptops in the house (which belong to my wife and daughters). But what about people with only one PC available? What would happen if they were facing a deadline for an assignment and their computer refused to cooperate?