Sometimes when I’m curious, I’ll look up the ratings of the studio I work at and see if anyone has left feedback for my class. Most of the time there’s feedback for other classes and on some rare occasions I’ll get some positive feedback, which makes my POP heart soar with happiness, but today was definitely a first. I got some feedback on my virtual class that made my heart sink deep into my gut.
Overall, they said they couldn’t hear my mic, and they didn’t like the way I kept running to the computer to play each song. They also didn’t think the workout wasn’t great/challenging enough.
Oof.
I’m not super great with criticism, and reading all of that made me want to go crawl into a hole and cry a little bit. lol.
I’m a perfectionist and I hate to see someone having a terrible experience. I also feel awful that someone’s experience with POP wasn’t perfect, and that they probably won’t try it again because of me. POP is so much fun, and I’m really sorry I wasn’t able to provide that experience to that person.
Honestly it really sucks, but I can sit and wallow in junky feelings, or take this as an opportunity to learn and grow.
I have to see it from their point of view. And I agree, the workout probably wouldn’t be as effective if I wasn’t able to hear the instructor’s instructions. There were also a lot of technical/set up things that I’ve been having trouble with, which I’ve brought up with the studio manager. Usually when I taught from home having the audio play was easy since I just set up a Bluetooth speaker and connected it to my phone. At the studio I have to figure out how to work my playlist on their computer while also adjusting the volume/connection of the Bluetooth mic.
I’ve also been troubleshooting the issues with my playlist, as it won’t play the next song automatically. (Why must tech stuff be so frustrating?!) On my computer the playlist works just fine, but when I try to use the computer at the studio, it just stops playing after one song. After some searching around I think it might be because I have my own silence track being used in between my songs, which could be what’s throwing off the playlist–as majority of the songs are uploaded from apple music/iTunes. Thankfully someone has a song up on Apple Music with 20 seconds of silence that I found to throw into my playlist (THANK YOU Brett Black!!!), so crossing my fingers that this works, because it really does throw off the flow of the workout when I have to keep running over to the computer to play the next song lol.
I also wasn’t aware that the mic audio wasn’t working properly–I always leave the chat box on Zoom open in case they want to message me about anything, but the chat box was empty each time I checked during the class. But it’s good to know for next time so that I can preface the workout with a more open line of communication, if that makes sense.
So all in all, while a negative review makes me pretty sad, it’s just a chance to learn and grow to be more technically competent as an instructor.
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Mintelates' Fitness Journey 