Professor Who Does Not Tolerate Technology Errors Cannot Unmute Himself

Everyone has had at least one professor who makes it clear from day one that technological errors do not count as an excuse for not turning in an assignment. It is repeated over and over again, in the description of every assignment, and in bold, italics, and underlined on the syllabus. Now that classes have gone online, every possible hurdle becomes a technology error, which is still not tolerated under any circumstances. Because of this, students in an FSU college algebra class were shocked when they tuned in to their Zoom lecture to see their professor’s mouth moving and no sound coming out.

“Look, I get it. I have a grandpa. Old people aren’t good at cool stuff,” said freshman exploratory major Hannah Rodriguez. As of today, she has a 65.3% in the class and needs all the help she can get. With the Skoolers monkey dead from COVID-19, it was time to start paying attention. “I don’t show up that much, but I do the work. When my email with my assignment attached went to his junk folder, the professor told me I never sent it and gave me a zero.” Hannah’s fellow online lecture students have had their own struggles with computers, such as trying to complete a timed project on FSU WiFi, which has been proven to be equivalent to using the internet on a 1G flip phone from a mall kiosk. 

As the professor began to write equations on the whiteboard without even a single marker squeak, none of the students knew what to do. Some tried to follow the steps and figure out the methods from there, some tried to read lips, while others just logged out and went back to bed. “I typed that we couldn’t hear anything like 100 times, and then when he noticed like ten minutes later, he still couldn’t figure out how to unmute himself,” complained sophomore Andrew Hall. “I kept telling him that it was the little button that looked like the microphone but he could not seem to do it.” By the end of the lecture, 50 students had messaged the professor to tell him that he was muted while his back was to the screen, teaching a method that nobody could hear.

Two hours later, all students in the 8:30-9:45 a.m. college algebra lecture received an email from their professor stating that due to technical errors, there would be an extension on the homework and asked his students to “Be patient, I’m still learning too.” It was at that moment that the overwhelming majority of students decided that their course evaluation would be overwhelmingly negative, because “issues with technology were not an excuse for not completing work.” The Eggplant reached out to this professor for a comment, but he had still not found a way to turn the microphone on.