NOTE: If you can’t get enough of Zoom horror stories, check out junior Ella Hochstadt’s short film here!

A sudden shine of bright light and you’re awake. You blink a couple times and rub the sleep out of your eyes. Then you get dressed and brush your teeth. Maybe even eat some breakfast if there’s time (there’s usually not). Then you make your way over to the computer. You pull up your Google Calendar and click the Zoom link to enter your first class. You are in your class, about to say “hi” to your teacher, when the infamously dreaded notification of “Your internet connection is unstable” pops up on the screen. And then boom, Zoom closes.

For the students who haven’t really woken up yet, this can be something of a gift. However, Zoom closing always seems to happen at the worst moments; usually when you are about to talk or when the teacher is saying something important. It’s like there is a tiny person controlling your internet and right when something important happens, they decide to disconnect your WiFi just to make you upset. I use the eternity that my WiFi takes to restart to eat something or do something fun just to show that tiny person that their plan backfired.

To say the least, it’s pretty annoying when your Zoom connection is unstable, but it is just as unbearable when your teacher’s connection is unstable. Those moments when your teacher says something and then there is a ten-second pause and then they continue talking are infuriating. Senior Kyle Chen said that “sometimes when someone's internet is slow when they are speaking, their camera freezes and their audio kinda cuts out.” Lag is especially taxing when you tell the person that they lagged out and ask them to repeat themselves, but then when they try to repeat it they lag out again. Chen says, “after some delay they start talking extremely fast which I always find really funny.” It’s like there’s a volcano and the lava is bubbling and rising. Then there is a spectator - the person who is enduring their peers' or teacher’s laggy internet - who is staring over the edge of the volcano and at some point they know the lava will hit them but they are not sure when so they are still paying attention. When the lava hits, chaos ensues. The intensity and ultra-awareness of these moments is unbearable. 

When asked about getting logged out of a Zoom meeting, Upper School science teacher and advisor Mr. Kenneth Pamiloza commented that “it sucks when it happens.” When he gets logged out of a Zoom, though, he usually tries to “make a light joke out of it” or says that “my fiance needed more internet power compared to me at that moment.” Many Zoom troubles happen because of WiFi issues, but the most entertaining Zoom mishaps happen in the form of technical mistakes. 

Senior Antonie Steenbergen finds the times “when students unmute by accident” the most entertaining to watch. The unmute button seems to have a mind of its own sometimes and, like the WiFi, it apparently wants to unmute at the worst times. Steenbergen says “sometimes I am just staring at the unmute button during assembly to make sure that I don’t get unmuted by accident.” However, the unmute button knows better than to unmute when someone is watching. It always unmutes when you least expect it.

If there’s one thing to take away from these zoom mishaps, it’s that Zoom is the enemy we can’t defeat. Zoom is our collective white whale; we chase an answer to our troubles but it always seems to evade us. Suffering these mishaps can be difficult when we are Zoom’s target, but we can at least try to savor the schadenfreude when these problems happen with our peers.