Zoom is the epicenter of slacking off. Rushing to school with a heavy backpack and showing off your new sneakers has now been replaced by students quite literally rolling out of bed and into class, and learning in your favorite pair of sweatpants. 

While forcing your eyes to endure seven consecutive hours of online class is never enjoyable, especially without the company of friends or even a physical community, there are some advantages to this alternative jail cell. 

The designer coats, backpacks and sneakers no longer stud the Ramaz hallways like they used to. In addition, the bathrooms during Tefillah are not crowded with students applying their last coat of mascara of heating up a styling wand. Michal Seinfeld ’21 said, “I haven’t touched my curling iron in months, which I used to use daily to curl my hair for school.” Now, girls don’t have to wear skirts to Talmud, and no one will notice that you’ve been wearing the same shirt three days in a row. In a way, virtual learning has increased productivity and focus in class, while decreasing the pressure to dress up.

Yet some students feel that staring at themselves during class is only more of a distraction. “Now that I see my face on Zoom, I’m always fixing my hair during class. Virtual learning has made me more self-conscious.” said an anonymous junior boy. 

Yet, you can still hide your bad hair days and under-eye bags technologically if you wish. Zoom has proven not only to be a great learning tool, but also an at-home salon. Just experiment with the “touch up my appearance” button, which offers to blur your complexion, change your lip color, facial hair, and background. If you really want to “hide-out,” simply tilt your computer camera and show your class a lovely view of your ceiling (too bad we aren’t permitted to turn off our cameras completely). G.O. President, Caitlin Levine ’21, believes that we should each have “three passes to turn off our cameras during school assemblies.” 

All the different pros and cons of Zoom makes putting in effort something harder to do than it already is. Being a highschool student is already stressful and adding on a global pandemic, surely, didn’t help. Having so many tasks to juggle and endless fatigue from a never ending day makes it almost impossible to function. Not only does the social pressure to look good fade because we cannot physically see one another, but also the different aspects of Zoom almost force us to give up our desire to impress.