HOW TO:
survive a boring zoom call By Jake Flaherty In the age of COVID-19, boring Zoom calls are claiming the lives of innocent people worldwide. Drab lectures, useless club meetings—sometimes you even get that one kid who has to dump their entire life story onto the Zoom call. But fear not! To turn your Zoom call from torture to tea time, just remember the four-letter acronym A.S.M.R.: avert, shield, mime, and relax. *NOTE #1: If the Zoom call has 20+ members, feel free to leave even earlier. The Zoom call is now too large for your teacher to keep track of each individual. While your teacher will still see one of their students leaving, there’s no way they’ll remember which of you it was.
1. Avert Your first goal is to minimize the amount of time on your Zoom call without your teacher noticing. Less time on the call is less time being bored.
Show up late
In a typical classroom setting, teachers scold people for being late. However, despite the lack of transportation required for Zoom, the average Zoom call will wait a few minutes for latecomers. Take advantage of this.
Leave early
When clubs/teachers finish, they will usually ramble on for a bit. Leave early. The club/class has already counted you for attendance. You can even make an excuse to shave off extra minutes. Say your goldfish drowned. Maybe your potted plant contracted COVID-19. Get creative. The more tragic, the less they’ll argue.*
2. Shield The key to enjoying a boring Zoom call is distracting yourself with another activity, which you are unable to do without proper deflection. Here’s what to do to reduce being called on.
Volunteer early Whether it’s for icebreakers or a classroom discussion, volunteer at least twice very early on. This way, the teacher/classmates will be enticed to call on others. If you can make a big enough impact early on, the teacher will leave you alone for the rest of class. Also, if your teacher does one of those “popcorn” things, going early will save you from having to pay attention.
Turn off the facecam If your facecam is off, people will either assume that you have a problem or forget about you. While some teachers will still include you, it will reduce the chances that you will be called on/involved. Having
