By Mikey Vasquez
Each new semester is a time to improve from the last one. Whether it’s grades, stress management, test scores, how you treat your teachers, we all have something in the back of our mind we want to fix.
I want to fix my participation in classes. I chose this because this is the first time I’ve been to an online school in years. When I found out that I wasn’t going to an in-perosn school, I got nervous about not being able to socialize on a daily basis and not having friends that I can talk with during the day because I was nervous about being active in zoom calls. It’s especially difficult when I’m in a class where no one else participates or has their camera on.
Last semester I really didn’t try, I wouldn’t turn on my camera, talk on mic, talk in chat or join clubs. Me being self-conscious about my appearance definitely made it harder to participate and turn on my camera. It was hard for me to have fun in the live lessons and engage with the other students compared to an in-person school.
For this semester, I am going to join more extracurricular activities and zoom calls and turn on my camera. I’m going to type in chat more rather than just answering questions. I will use my mic more to talk with other students.
This experience with online school has helped me to be more comfortable with all the attention on me, while it’s not all of me, having your camera on means other people may be staring at you at any given moment. If you’re also uncomfortable in zoom calls, any little improvement is a great leap, whether you answer questions in the groupchat rather than DM’ing the teacher, or talking on mic in breakout rooms. It’s really all about not caring what others think and just having fun.
