Publish and Perish, part 14: Theater Review

[Context: read the previous part or start from the beginning. TW: bad amateur fiction!]

“So how was Tuesday with Morrie, and Lefty, and Curly?” said Paul to Gerald as they walked around the lake (a gentle exercise option that Gerald had proposed as an alternative to basketball).

“It was … great, I think,” said Gerald. “The group format worked better than I thought it would. The three of us had overlapping problems, so we had a pretty rich discussion. It was like one of those jigsaw exercises — do you ever do those with your students?”

Paul squinted. “Is that the thing where each student first answers a question individually, and then confers with a neighbor…”

“No, that’s Think-Pair-Share,” Gerald said. “A jigsaw is more like, everybody gets a different figure from a paper, and first you discuss your figure with others who were assigned that figure, and then you form a new group in which each figure is represented by one person, and each person explains their figure and then the group pieces together the overall story that the figures are telling.” He kicked a stick out of the way. “It seemed as though the three of us had enough in common for our pieces to fit together pretty well.” He paused. “I don’t know if that was just lucky, or if Morris had figured out that we would be compatible.”

“And who,” Paul asked, “were these other interlocking pieces, again?”

“Cissy Ciplinski, from Economics, and Hector Vargas Gomez, from English. Do you know them?”

“Not well,” Paul said, “but Cissy can be pretty hilarious at Faculty Senate meetings.” He paused as if thinking of an example. “Last year, just before the latest proliferation of dean positions, she feigned ignorance of the dean’s offices in the most outlandish ways. Like, ‘Sorry, remind me again — have we posted the ad for the Associate Dean of Neoclassical Food Services yet? Or was that for the Assistant Dean of Rehabilitative Cohousing?’ Even the administration can’t hold a grudge against her; she’s just too funny.”

“Yeah,” said Gerald, “I thought she was great — and Hector too. It made me wonder whether, instead of a therapist, I just need more or better friends to process things with — no offense.”

“None taken,” interjected Paul, feigning the sarcasm of the wounded.

“But then I think back to my recent conversation with Lois Chernoff, one of my first thesis students…. You remember Lois, don’t you?”

“She … she was the one who was always early for everything, right? And who always asked great questions at guest-speaker seminars?”

“Yup. Although she later told me that, with the seminar questions, she kind of cheated.”

“Cheated? How?” Paul seemed genuinely confused.

“She would read the speaker’s papers in advance.”

“Why, that low-down double-crosser…” Paul stopped in his tracks, pretending to be shaken to his core.

“Yeah — pretty galling, right? What was she trying to do, make the faculty look bad? Anyway” — they resumed walking — “why did I bring her up? Oh yeah — I recently had coffee with her, and — I think it’s OK for me to tell you this — she’s been in therapy for years, and she thinks she’s benefited greatly from it, even though she also has a great network of friends. So maybe I should do likewise.”

“Maybe…you should get professional help?” Paul clarified.

“Yes.”

“But aren’t you already doing that? Remember, Morris is certified!”

“Well, yeah — but I haven’t felt that committed up to now. Like, sure, I was willing to spend an hour in Morris’s comically undersized theater and see what happened. But now it feels like it’s time to, you know, audition in earnest. Or accept the role that’s been offered to me and plan for a six-month engagement. Or … hmmm … is it too late to abandon this metaphor and start over?”

“I know what you mean,” said Paul. “Bring the curtain down.”

[Update: the story continues with part 15.]