I was sitting in my school’s dining hall, Benson, trying to finish some homework assignments when I came across a video in our digital textbook that I thought might be helpful to watch. As such, I paused the song I was listening to on my phone before transitioning my attention back toward my laptop. Feeling no urge to remove my earbuds, I proceeded to play the video before quickly noticing that I wasn’t hearing anything.

With the roaring conversations around me and news reports blaring from televisions, it was easy to assume my volume just wasn’t high enough. But it was also easy to assume that the video didn’t have any sound. It was just a link in my digital textbook, after all.

Still, I tapped away at my volume button, and that’s when I came to the daunting realization that my headphones were still plugged into my phone, and I was probably one of the few people in my vicinity, if not the only one, who didn’t hear the video’s crackly sound.