Please Join Zoom Meeting In Progress
By: Chloe Venn
Tags: Covid, Story, Zoom

“Hello. Is everyone here?” the Professor asks.

A dozen students on the screen are framed in equal rectangular boxes, stacked neatly together. Some students reply by shaking their heads, some unmute their microphone to say, “Yes, Professor,” some stare blankly into the camera, and a few have their video switched off entirely. But they aren’t here. They are sitting in their childhood bedrooms, at the kitchen table, or in front of worn study desks. They are home, or somewhere else, with their families, or without. One student sits in front of a wide-open window and bathes in the blue morning air. Another rests beside warm lamplight in the quiet of the evening. Not long ago they faced each other at a classroom table; now they meet again, wherever it is quiet and connected to the internet.

“Can you all hear me?”

The chorus agrees. Some students wear headphones. Some have their computer speakers on full volume; so that outside their room, a sibling passing by the door hears unfamiliar voices. Some students can hear, but divert their attention to their phones, hidden from their web camera’s view.

“All right. I hope everyone is doing well, wherever you are,”

Some students are doing well. Some have forgotten the way days begin, how long they last, and when they are supposed to end. Some are anxious, some are apathetic. They are deciding if it is better to reminisce the past or long for the future. One student has baked carrot cakes for three consecutive days. Another has been sanding his father’s wooden furniture in the backyard.

“And, I hope you are staying safe and healthy during this time.”

The students smile assuringly, they continue a blank stare, or they continue to have their video switched off. They are still not accustomed to the normality of this greeting, which appears at the beginning of every email, in texts with loved ones, or in the mouths of government officials on broadcasted news.

So the lesson begins: some students listen, some attempt to listen, some revel in the pretension of listening. There’s a student who earnestly watches the professor speaking, scribbles down notes, and contributes occasional profundity to the discussion. There’s a student checking themself out in their video thumbnail. There are two students sending private messages to each other, noticing each time the other appears to smile on their screen.

There was a time when the Professor sat before them with talkative hands and a furrowed brow, who every so often made acrobatic leaps to the whiteboard and drew imperfect illustrations of theoretical concepts. A time when the student must consider how upright to sit, how long gazing out of the window can go unnoticed, or how often to sip coffee from their cup.

Now, the Professor appears on the screen slightly blurred, their cadence slightly altered; the Students can drag the Professor across their desktop, they can expand or minimize the amount of space the Professor occupies on their screens. Each student manages the two-dimensional plane before them, yet also exists within their classmates’ and the Professor’s computer display. All have the Zoom application opened. Some also have digital files of reading assignments or typed-up notes open. Some habitually glance at social media posts. Some scroll through online retail websites, because the global pandemic has been great for sales.

Regardless of their computer’s design or model, it is certain that at one corner of each of their screens, a digital clock quantifies every passing minute. Another minute of speaking, listening, watching, concentrating, ignoring, avoiding; another minute of the morning or evening; another minute spent in the endless uncertainty of the present.