Im thinking that the finals is not utilizing my nvidia graphics card so if anyone has advice i would greatly appreciate
Well, if you have a suspicion, start with confirming it. Simplest test, does the card get hot? Is the fan spinning up? If you install a gpu monitor does it show a spike? Does your CPU even have integrated graphics?
Case in point, my late 50s father was recently fired from his job of 36 years. They told him not to return the ancient E series thinkpad they had given him as an email checker, but wouldn’t give him a password to be able to use it. After finding the bios wasn’t locked I chucked Debian on it for him and he’s been using it for months to send applications with only a light introduction libreoffice and some minor tinkering with system settings to make it feel more familiar.
VPN to your cloud server.