Bringing a popcorn machine from home and reserving a room in the UC with a large screen projector and surround sound, Professor Barry Goodteach was visibly excited for his technical writing class’ video projects last Friday. The 5-week-long video assignment was meant to showcase the talent and editing abilities of his class; however, the first year lecturer had severely overestimated his students’ abilities.
“Everyone ready for Sundance?” the oblivious professor reportedly joked before experiencing the most earth-shattering disappointment of his professional career.
“There is enough popcorn for everyone.” An inside source would later reveal that no one ate the popcorn.
After some initial difficulties locating a USB, the presentation quickly began on a sour note as no students volunteered first to show the 5 minute instructional video most had done the night before.
“Any volunteers? Anyone?” The desperate professor was reportedly pleading to a silent room of 20 students.
Forced to go in alphabetical order, the first group of two looked hopeful. The video began with an introduction that included sound effects, interesting graphics and a powerful voice over. What followed was an event that would flashback to the professor twice in his lifetime; once during the birth of his first daughter and the second on his death bed.
The emotional and interesting work of visual arts immediately dropped to a grainy cell-phone shot of the two students standing over a kitchen table.
“Now we will show you how to make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich,” stated the two men, to almost inaudible sound quality. The microphone crackled throughout the video, echoing the professor’s heart.
The rest of the videos continued in a smaller manner. Before losing faith in every future class, professor Goodteach experienced a string of videos nowhere near the moderately high expectations he had for the project he had spent weeks setting up. Eating more popcorn than he had since childhood, the professor fought through tears of frustration during the remaining videos.
“We all felt really bad after,” stated student Noe DiRector, who created an instructional yoga video the night before -— despite having never performed yoga. “He had to really curve the grade on this one.”
Dismissing the class, the professor who would experience night terrors for the rest of his adult-life, locked himself in his office for the remainder of the day, ignoring all of his other tasks as well as all calls from his wife and children. A broken popcorn machine was discovered two days later in a ravine along the Leon Creek Greenway.
