September 6, 2021

“Okay, everyone, for the last ten minutes of class, I will put you into your breakout rooms so you can discuss the final project. Also, remember to put your topic in the spreadsheet. I will see you all on Thursday”, Professor Evans said before we all started to get redirected to our virtual rooms.

When I entered the virtual room, I saw that the others kept their cameras on, but nobody said anything. Finally, after a moment of silence, Eloise decided to ask the million-dollar question. “Soo, what topic are we doing?”

“I am not sure; I am okay with anything,” Ramon said in response. 

“I am okay with any topic as well. Does anybody at least have a geological preference like earthquakes, tsunamis, volcanoes, floods, or tornados?” Anais said.

“Oh, why don’t we do the volcano that destroyed Pompeii?” Eloise said. 

Hmm, not bad, but I feel that it is a bit of a predictable choice. It is usually one of the first events to think about,” Anais retorted.

Besides, I just checked the spreadsheet, and Group 3 is typing that in,” Maki said.

“Then does anybody else have any idea because I am fresh out,” Eloise signed.

Everybody else said no in response, and the silence returned. I was still a bit hesitant to speak, but then I noticed that the time was starting to dwindle, and we still had not picked a topic. I looked at the topic list I decided to take a deep breath and say something, “Uhm…if you still prefer volcanos, why don’t we do Mount Tombara instead”. 

“Okay, let’s go with that, but I never heard about it?” Eloise said.

I was about to answer her question when Anais beat me to the punch. “I have; Mount Tombara is a volcano in Indonesia, and its eruption was the largest in recorded history. I learned a little bit about it from a previous class; it would be a good topic for our project,” Anais said.

“Okay, I put that into the spreadsheet, so now since we have our topic, why don’t we all do some research, and I will create and share a document, so we write out our outline,” Ramon said

Everybody else and I said okay in response. We then said our goodbyes since we finished discussing our next steps.

 “Thank god that is over,” I huffed as I leaned back on my computer chair and stared up at the ceiling. God, why do the first few group project meetings always feel so awkward?

“I know, right” I heard someone else say, and I immediately looked back at my laptop screen and saw to utmost horror that I didn’t log out of the meeting properly.