Throughout my time in college, there have numerous things that I have come to dread: 9 AM classes, parking, reply-to-all emails, and game day and move-in day traffic. However, despite all of these things, the worst one has to be class group chats.
Don’t get me wrong. GroupMe chats can be a blessing if used properly, but there’s nothing worse than trying to study and having your Intro to Psychology chat blow up while you’re trying to study because 7 to 9 freshmen have decided to use it as a Snapchat group or a dating app for hours on end. Sure, you can mute the chat, but then you miss important notifications or information about assignments or you can say something and get tagged as the “kid who hates fun” for the rest of the semester.
At first, I thought maybe it’s a freshman thing and it’ll get better later on. This, unfortunately, happens every semester (I’m now a junior so I’ve been in my fair share of GroupMe chats) and it seems like class group chat etiquette is no longer a taught subject.
Just like a mass email, please be curious to fellow members before sending something out into the chat. If it applies to everyone, feel free to type and send, but if you’re going to be initiating a selfie contest with zoomed in close up of your eyes and your roommate’s stuff (a real incident I had to sit through), maybe think twice before sending it out.