For many colleges, the new semester is a week or two old — just long enough for students to ditch the New Year’s resolution to pay attention in class.
In that spirit, and inspired by a pretty bald example, we asked professors about the oddest thing they’d ever seen on a student’s screen in class. They — or their students, rather — didn’t disappoint.
Some responses conformed pretty squarely with the stereotype of the scheming student. “Student making fake faculty parking permits in Photoshop,” wrote Kevin from the State University of New York, who took the logical corrective action: “Made sure he wasn’t putting my lot on the permits. So few spots as it is!”
Other responses put today’s generation squarely in the #millennial camp. “A student was trying to find the most appropriate absurd gif to post on another student’s Facebook wall for their birthday for a solid 10 minutes,” wrote A. from the University of Colorado at Boulder.
Facebook may still be a classroom distraction, but it no longer holds a subversive appeal. Case in point: John at Santa Clara University, who during a lecture one day noticed a student lost in her screen. “Still lecturing,” he wrote, “I strolled down the aisle to investigate, she didn’t even look up. Imagine my surprise when I saw that she was surfing my Facebook page. She finally looked up, and when I suggested, gently, that she might want to close her laptop, she whispered, ‘I just sent you a friend request.’” No word on whether he accepted it.
Keith from Columbia College Chicago reported a slightly more disturbing in-class distraction: “A picture of me as a child.” His response? “Nothing, I was too shocked.”
For some students, work and distraction appear to go hand-in-hand. Joanne from the University of Tampa named her weirdest screen sighting as “the classic split screen of porn and code.” She added: “Gentleman always seemed a bit ‘bothered’ but did great work.” Eek.
Speaking of porn, it’s apparently not an uncommon sight in lecture halls. Other common responses included athletes watching their own highlight reels, and students shopping for shoes.
Webcams appear to be a reliable source of real-time diversion. Beth from Georgia Gwinnett College said she saw a student staring at a live feed of his empty dorm room for an hour. Gayle from Sacramento City College said a student was preoccupied with a live feed of his pet python (named Eve, duh). Gayle recounted her conversation with the student:
He said, “I usually bring her with me, but today I left her home because she wasn’t feeling well.”
“You bring her with you? To class?” I asked.
“Oh yes. She stays in my backpack.”
“Not after this conversation, she doesn’t!”
Yikes.
True to its intention, the survey also turned up some responses notable for their straight-up weirdness. Patty from the University of Kansas reported that a graduate student warned her about a student who was using “a dating website for people who belonged to an unusual religious group” during class. Patty was curious, so she had a librarian turn up some materials on the group. Armed with knowledge, she approached the student, who was absorbed on her phone, during class one day. “On the screen was a man on his back, pouring some kind of liquid into his mouth from a spout.” Undeterred, Patty grabbed the phone and said, “My dear, if he’s so nifty, I’m sure he’ll be nifty for you after class. Get your phone before you leave.” Go Patty!
Some other weird responses that speak for themselves:
- “The Wild Thornberrys cartoon.”
- “Naked family portraits. HIS family. And he was in them.”
- “A student shopping for yellow snake-eye contacts. And using image software to put different options on a picture of themselves to compare which would look best.”
- “A video of a man watching an arugula plant grow. That’s it, just standing next to the planter bed watching. It was, like, a 12-minute video, and there was no motion, just the man staring at his arugula.”
- “Joanie Greggains and Richard Simmons workout videos (from the 80s).”
One person listed bridal gowns, mixed-martial-arts techniques, and images of body parts as particularly strange sights. But one page stood out as the oddest — the college’s own website. “Given the usual fare, I felt this was probably the weirdest of all,” the respondent wrote.
Of course, students aren’t alone in their screen dependence. Kathy from a small, private New York university wrote that she had observed a fellow faculty member distracted during a meeting.
What was he doing? “Browsing job ads and then going to Zillow to check out real estate in the areas he was checking out.”
This is probably a lot more common than watching webcam footage of Eve, the snake.
Andy Thomason oversees breaking news coverage. Send him a tip at andy.thomason@chronicle.com. And follow him on Twitter @arthomason.
