You don’t have to leave your apartment and you can drink coffee and eat oatmeal while your teacher yells about physical anthropology over Zoom. All you need to be wearing is a shirt — though the Pitt News Editorial Board strongly advises you also wear pants — and all you have to do otherwise is open your laptop screen and click a link. You’re still late to class everyday. We know. It’s hard. Not that you even need any, but here are our top 10 excuses for being late to a Zoom class. 

10. The commute

The 5 feet from your bed to your desk is a lot. We know. 

9. Tent 

Ah, the beauty of the structure necessary for the expelling of air. Cathy is but an eyesore compared to Tent, which is sitting in the middle of the Cathedral lawn completely empty, because we do not have in-person classes, because having in-person classes doesn’t make sense, but Pitt wants those sweet tuition dollars. 

8. Making coffee

Now that Starbucks isn’t in the path of our morning commute, we’ve been forced to come to terms with the fact that a four-dollar-a-day coffee habit is ridiculous. But making strong coffee via a pourover takes a good eight minutes, and we always think we can do it in four. Coffee is more important than Zoom. 

7. Sending an Email

E-mail is a time warp. You sit down and start typing and you get three sentences through, and all of a sudden, 30 minutes have passed. No, we won’t further explain this. 

Warmly, 

The Pitt News Editorial Board

6. Dogs

Many students chose to stay at home this semester due to Zoom University, and so many of us are with our pets. Dogs don’t understand why you have to leave them to go to Zoom classes, so the only plausible explanation here is to not leave them, and go to your Zoom class late. 

5. You were watching the weather on TV

Apparently people still do this. If you have a good reason why you don’t just check the weather app, email the opinions editors at [email protected]. We’re not going to publish a story on it. We just want to know. 

4. You simply dropped out

Can’t figure out if we’re paying tuition to Zoom or Ann Cudd’s Tent or the garbage in South Oakland. So might as well not pay it at all. 

3. TikTok

You can’t flirt with people in class or go on random Tinder dates during a global pandemic so sometimes you just have to watch NYU quarantine meal TikToks until 3 a.m. to feel something. 

2. Your PopTart got stuck in the toaster

Just this morning, our culture editor Charlie was late because they got their chocolate churro flavored PopTart stuck in their toaster. The PopTart was edible, but it was broken into many pieces — kind of like your brain after two weeks of Zoom University — and the PopTart was covered in crumbs from other things they had toasted in the past. They kept their camera off for the first 15 minutes of class so they could cry. 

1. The modified start time

OK — just let us log into our English Writing class that starts at 9:25 a.m. Nothing in the world has ever started at 9:25 a.m. Literally nothing. This makes no sense. Why couldn’t it have just stayed at 9:30, or moved to 9:15? Why does administration get turned on by making everything complicated?