why is my wifi still trying to locate a network when I'm already connected to the internet?

Are you referring to pulling down the wifi (fan-of-arcs) icon and seeing "Wi-Fi: Looking for networks..." on the first line?

If that's what you meant, here's my take on it:

Since you pulled down the wifi icon, you may have wanted to change your mind on which wifi network to use, so the system has to look to see if any new networks have popped up (or old ones disappeared) since you last pulled down the menu. If you hold the menu down for a few moments, it should switch to "Wi-Fi: On" after the search is done.