I fucked up. Forgot that I was screen sharing while giving a Zoom class...
I'm using a throwaway account.
This semester has been absolutely brutal to teach. The rampant use of ChatGPT is causing me severe depression as I ponder my life and ask whether or not teaching is really meaningful anymore.
One of my classes out of the 4 that I teach has been particularly hard. I'm lucky if 25-30% of students show up, and when they do, almost all of them actively ignore me. Almost all of them are all cheating on the assignments, and used ChatGPT to get "answers" for the midterm exam (I gave them a study guide). One student has shouted at me multiple times this semester because they politically disagree with what I teach, and a couple of weeks ago, they told me in front of the entire class that I "deserve to be fired."
I'm an extremely passionate person and love to bring tons of energy into the class to inspire students, but when I'm delivering that performance to zombies who are not even going 10% of the way to reciprocate, it's an incredibly draining and demoralizing experience. Naturally, it's caused me to resent the students and has caused my teaching performance to tank.
Fast forward to today.... I moved my last class to Zoom because I couldn't stand to see them anymore. I gave them a "family emergency" excuse. During the first 20 minutes, only 3 students showed up. After that, 10 more ended up coming late.
After the usual grade grubbing questions like, "how do I score higher on the exam?," "can you give us extra credit," etc., I finally got to asking them, "who has questions from the study guide? I am here to answer any questions, to help you prepare for the final, etc. etc." Silence for 5 minutes. Nobody says anything.
Out of boredom and habit, while waiting for them to respond, I opened my messaging app and clicked to a recent message thread between a friend and I while I was STILL screen sharing. The message said the following:
"Last day of class. Only 3 students showed up. I moved it to Zoom because I couldn't stand to see their stupid faces anymore."
The messaging app was open for at least 3-5 minutes. I am sure at least some of the students saw it. I immediately closed it when I snapped to, but I realized the damage had been done. I proceeded to lecture for another hour to black screens on Zoom, red in the face, barely able to concentrate because of my embarrassment.
That's it. If y'all have any similar embarrassing stories to share to help me feel a little less cringe and alone, I'd love to hear them.
Thanks for reading <3