I spent more than a week submitting my application to MSU. My best friends, sister and parents extensively combed through it with me. Not because it was extremely tedious, although it was, but because it was online.

We had a checks and balance system to make sure there wasn’t a forgotten page or an unanswered question. It was a lot to look through, and it felt so impersonal to me.

I know young people are typically technologically savvy, but MSU should take into consideration that parents want to be involved in their children’s education. For them, there is a generational information gap when it comes to the Internet, and my application to MSU was one thing that fell into that category.

My parents are divorced and one gets upset if the other knows more about what’s going on in my life. But they can’t sit in the same room without an argument breaking out. Though they could have looked at my application separately because it was online, they couldn’t figure out how to do it without me guiding them. And before my dad signs off on anything, he has to see it and understand it.

That week of filling out the application was more painful than it needed to be. I had to work through the Rubik’s Cube of a process and then explain it to my parents. Everything was digitized and I felt like I was just another number. There was no one I could go to with my questions or concerns unless I wanted to send an email. I was on my own.

Once I was accepted to MSU, there were more online hurdles to jump over. The billing process and my student account were among them. Trying to order my textbooks online was agonizing. There were directions, but they were so vague it took me about an hour to find just one book.

My technology problems continued when I didn’t have a router my first week and could only connect to MSU’s Wi-Fi.

The Wi-Fi would fade in and out and sometimes just shut off completely. Nearly all my class information — assignments, projects and syllabi — were posted on Angel or D2L. But professors didn’t accept my lack of reliable Internet access as a valid excuse for not being up to speed in class.

I knew college was going to be different, but I didn’t expect a majority of it to be online.

If professors handed out assignments instead of stuffing them somewhere on the Internet it would be easier and more beneficial for students. After all, technology shouldn’t be a learning curve.

Rachel Brauer is an intern at The State News. Reach her at brauer@statenews.com.