I was reminded of a really interesting time regarding the intersection between Tiktok, Computer Science, and my University’s Newspaper. Weird right?
So I was in this class last semester called CS 15, part of the Introduction sequence for new CS students. There was an entire army of TAs, as it was a big class, and so they planned lots of fun little bits during lectures to spice things up. The biggest of which was our daily stretch breaks, where we would stop and stretch/dance with something random on the projector for a minute before going back to learn about LinkedLists or whatever it was on that day.
So one day we had a substitute professor, and I guess no one told him about our stretch breaks, as a TA quite suddenly interrupted him and he told the class “I’ve been told I need to stop talking now”, as he wandered off the stage and was replaced by a group of TAs in random fun clothing. I made a TikTok about it because I found professor Spike’s reaction to 700 people dancing to Katy Perry’s “Hot N Cold” really amusing! And I guess so did 4.4 million other people. Yea, that when overboard a bit.
When our normal professor Andy Van Dam learned of my randomly viral TikTok, he requested the school paper, the Brown Daily Herald, to interview me! I was honored, a little awkwardly, but definitely still excited. One thing led to another and yea, I got on the school paper! I linked it here if yall wanna read about it. The Tiktok is still on my page, along with the one of my reaction to getting shown in class! Yea, I became an example of internet virality in one of the lectures. Kinda a cool way to come full circle.
