Thanks, Zoom: Professor Swinford's Uncomfortable Jokes Now Excruciating

Technology win! Chemistry professor Reginald Swinford is already known across campus for his strange and somewhat uncomfortable sense of humor. With instruction and office hours moving onto Zoom, students are reporting that Swinford’s mid-lecture quips have graduated from being “bad” and into the realm of “excruciating.”

“If you thought lecture was bad, just wait until you’re held virtually hostage by him for one-and-a-half hours in your own home,” Allan Fontaine (C ‘22) noted of his professor. “I wouldn’t wish it on my worst enemies.”

“Alright future chemists, riddle me this: what do you get when you cross a joke with a rhetorical question?” Swinford wisecracked to a room of fifty students, all with their microphones muted.

A full thirty seconds later, the old professor broke the silence:

“Yeah, um… so that was it,” Swinford remarked with a sheepish chuckle. “Talk about a tough crowd…”

“It felt like an eternity,” Sandra Amaya (C ‘22) confessed. “Not only that, but I cringed so hard my dog came over to my desk to see what was wrong.”

Every Thursday, Swinford hosts office hours in which he continues to test out his latest comedic material on unsuspecting students.

“Your question actually reminded me of a story… mind if I tell it?” Swinford asked over the call, the outlines of a smile forming on his face. “So get this: a doctor and a lawyer walk into a bar…”