“In a lot of ways when I’m first meeting someone, I prefer meeting them online because you get to share more of your personality than when you’re in a school setting. It also takes away from that social anxiety of meeting someone for the first time because you’re still showing your face, but it’s behind a screen,” Liliana Dyck said.

Making new friends has changed since last year, for a multitude of reasons, but the biggest one is the apparent distance between people right now. Little expressions, attitudes, auras, etc are missed behind the screen, making almost every on-screen interaction stale and lifeless.

“Whenever we do break out rooms, it’s a struggle,” Kira Heflin, sophomore said.

For Heflin and Kayla Johnson, breakout rooms during a zoom call make a period slightly more dreadful.

“They’re awkward and quiet. I had one the other day, though that went pretty well, it was because we were able to laugh at the silence and bond through that. And that’s so rare,” Johnson said.

Bouncing off of what Johnson described, the emptiness of someone’s presence has an effect of how people interact with one another. The circumstances one is under on camera and sharing themselves to other people behind screens for the vast majority is not ideal, specifically for break out rooms, but otherwise fine, as Dyck prefers. Some instances have grown onto people that show the positives that can be proven after trial and error for online students attending zoom calls.

“There’s nuance in real life that you just can’t do on zoom. There was this one kid in this Socratic seminar that would unmute himself a few seconds before he spoke, as a little signal to everyone that he would join the conversation, so I’m totally going to use that,” Heflin said.

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By Gabby Plasencia, staff writer

Featured photo by Gabriel Benois on Unsplash