Take classes in the comfort of your own home, they said. Who said my home is comfortable?

For perhaps the first time in our lives, college is no longer a solitary experience. Now, we’re faced with parents and siblings who have to make their zoom debut during our lectures (why). Here are some of Bwog’s funniest “family vs zoom” stories:

• My mom does a dramatic scooby-doo-esque tiptoe across the other side of the room when she knows I’m in class.
• My mom once winked cheekily offscreen at my professor.
• My uncle will stand behind me half in frame with his arms crossed or he’ll be intentionally loud and say weird things.
• My dad will record me while I’m in class, which is genuinely awful but also kind of funny maybe?
• My dad once burst in and started speaking to me in Spanish during a recitation, prompting my TA, who also spoke Spanish, to respond by asking him how he’s doing. My father is mortified.
• My sister will bring her ferrets into my room to show them off to whomever I might be meeting with.
• My mom likes to watch my lectures and make comments about my classmates. She also wanted me to send her the readings so she could take the class with me.
• When my dad enters the house, he likes to scream “WHAT UP BITCHES” to let me and my mom know he is home and the number of times he did that while I was unmuted on zoom….. I don’t want to talk about it.
• I was on a one on one zoom with my professor discussing the course and my sister popped in the background and started doing the macarena.
• I was in a breakout room and I asked my group a question and this girl’s dad came in and started answering the question for me.
• Everyone in my household is constantly whistling and I wonder if my mic ever picks it up.

Special shout out to the few parents who would rather not be seen:

• My mom likes to scuttle in with coffee she made for me to “get me through the day” and refuses to be seen by the camera, even if my video is turned off.
• My father, leaving for work and opening my bedroom door juuuuuuust a tad to say a quick goodbye w/o being picked up on camera
• My mom once came into my room during class to give me a bowl of grits and walked along the edge of the room to my desk to avoid being seen.

Zoom family via Bwog Archives