Bwogstaff reveals the oh so frightening and unsettling things they’ve experienced on Zoom.

In the words of Hannah Montana, “everyone makes mistakes and everyone has those days.” Bwog knows that “Nobody’s perfect” and is here to tell you about all of our far from perfect experiences on Zoom.

1. The second-hand embarrassment that made Bwog want to cry: 

To all the people still figuring out how to mute themselves…

• A student in my class yelled “hey shut up..I’m in class you annoying son of a gun…don’t make me come down there” and then proceeded to act confused when the professor suggested that they mute themselves.
• For the first week of Zoom classes, some kid in my 200-ish person lecture didn’t know he should mute himself at all. He didn’t speak or anything, but every time he would cough or sniffle his profile picture would blow up on speaker view. I think someone told him because he stopped doing it, but poor guy.
• A student in my class unmuted himself in a large lecture to ask if he could be partners with the “smartest” girl in the class. He then proceeded to talk over the professor when the professor repeatedly said we would no longer be having partnered assignments.
• Someone in my class accidentally unmuted themself when the professor was talking and screamed: “omg this fucking class!!!!!”
  • Also, this person accidentally unmuted themself and started talking about breakups and heartbreak during quarantine.
• I was in a huge lecture and everyone’s camera was off. In the middle of the lecture, someone started to talk.
  • They said “yeah, I’m doing the reading right now. No, not for this class. For my discussion section at 4:10. No, the TA checks if we did the reading for that class. Stop, I need to kind of pay attention to this.”
• One person’s computer picks up all the sound, so when our professor unmutes us to ask him questions, the computer causes a lot of feedback. One time, the professor got really mad at the feedback, so he just ended the meeting early.
• My professor got a phone call during class and quickly ran to their phone. They answered the call and nervously yelled “I’m in class *insert name*…I can’t talk right now”—we had two minutes left.
  • As class ended, a student in the chat room typed “Hahah Professor. Thank you.”

To all the people who lack self-awareness and made Bwog extremely uncomfortable… 

• In my first recitation over Zoom, a boy unmuted himself, picked up a bucket, spat a huge wad of mucus into the bucket while looking directly at the camera, put the bucket down, and then muted himself.
• This kid in my 16-person class (where we all have our cameras on) has been EATING THEIR MUCUS AND EARWAX ON CAMERA and I want to SCREAM.
  • Another kid in that class forgot to turn their audio off and went “oh FUCK that smells bad” while the professor was explaining something. We can only assume what he might have been referring to.
• A kid in my discussion section always calls in from their bed and you can see a mirror behind them. Sometimes an arm just appears out of nowhere and they start rubbing their back…it’s super weird and uncomfortable.

To all the people who’ve endured 10 minutes of horrific silence–wait I’m so sorry–I think I spelled Breakout rooms wrong…

• Every single time I’m put into a breakout room, without fail, none of us decide to unmute ourselves or turn our cameras on…
  • Bonus points for the one time we were all on mute, enduring our silent breakout room experience, and the professor jumped in with a loud “Hey Guys What’s Up!!” that gave me a goddamn heart attack and forced us all to pretend we were, you know, not all on mute with our videos off.

2. Even Bwog makes mistakes….Our first-hand embarrassment that probably made you want to cry: 

• I joined class with the name “Timothee Chalamet Can Fuck Me Up”.
  • I nearly cried on camera when I realized.
• My professor asked me to turn my camera on in class. I has forgotten that my background was a meme of Sal from Impractical Jokers…I had never been more exposed and embarrassed in MY LIFE.
• I was screen sharing and typed a word starting with “p” into my browser.
• I didn’t realize my mic was on and my dad started talking on the phone in the background. The professor stopped talking and got really nervous–they thought it was a zoom bomber.
• I was in the middle of giving a presentation and my cat jumped up behind me and started screaming at the top of her lungs.
• I was logging on onto a Zoom session for a big lecture class. Since starting classes online, my professor has relaxed on the requirements so fewer people have been attending class. When I got on the call, I saw only like ⅓ of the class was online so I said out loud (to my sister who was in the room): “Awww, only 35 people are on the call” and my professor looked up.
  • I’m not sure if it was coincidental or if he actually heard me but I still feel bad because he’s taking the time to plan and teach lectures and not a lot of people are showing up. I didn’t mean it in a bad way, I just felt bad. End rant.

 Bwog staff trying to find their best angles on Zoom via Bwarchives