On Zoom, some professors sport a blazer and some appear each morning as though they just shoved their head into a blender and awoke from the depths of hell. However, we found that professors’ Zoom-backgrounds are the real windows into their souls, so we conducted a study. Based on what your professor chooses to place behind them for class, the following are our findings – the dry groceries we predict would render them a nostalgic, blubbering mess:
- Extravagant Photograph or Painting: Bread
Every time she looks at bread, all your professor can see is the muscular hands of that sexy docent from the Guggenheim she fucked during her study-abroad in Paris, Giaccomo, spreading brie over a tastefully-asymmetric slice of baguette. Broke but alive, she wore turtlenecks and red lipstick; she survived on cigarettes, espresso, and inspiring mantras like “Fuck it” and “Carpe Diem.” She and her friends drank $2 Rosé sitting on urine-stained grass, fantasizing about the revolution.
- Canvas Curtains: Unsalted Almonds
Little did you know, your professor was an outdoors-king. Once, he was backpacking when, for some inexplicable reason, he found himself stuck in the middle of the Andes with nothing but a pack of unsalted almonds and his underwear. He survived for two weeks before a pack of wolves brought him to safety. Only the real ones know that this was the only time he ever felt truly alive. That aside, he is also one of those fucking psychos who actually likes unsalted almonds.
- Normal Berkeley Lecture Hall: “Wonka” Chocolate Bar
Technology frightens your professor. Despite remote-learning, Ph.Dinosaur insists on lecturing with his chalkboard in that stupid, musty LeConte lecture hall – the same way he has for the past 40 years. We assume that back when OG Willy Wonka was doing his whole lottery thing in the 1920s or something, your ol’ prof probably went to a candy store and bought a chocolate bar from a creepy old singing man to see if he got the golden ticket, right?
- Stack of Books With Spines Perfectly In-View That Your Professor Actually Wrote Himself: “Swiss Miss” Hot-Cocoa Mix
A mere whiff of cocoa-powder transports him to his childhood kitchen, where twice every day until he left for college his mother would make him a big mug of hot chocolate and tell him he was “a good, good boy.” She had a wall for his participation trophies. She also brushed his teeth for him, bathed him, plucked his eyebrows, drove him everywhere and accompanied him on dates with girls who never called him back. Hungry for love, he just wants someone to once again call him a “good, good boy.”
It is also possible that your professor is Robert Reich.