[Context: read the previous part or start at the beginning. TW: bad amateur fiction!]
Gerald went back to the lecture-hall podium, put his laptop back down, opened it up again, and double-clicked on the desktop file HERB.docx. Then he looked out at the 25 or so Behavioral Ecology students who were settling into their seats, probably wondering why he was there.
One of them approached him — a woman whose face he remembered from having taught her in another class, but whose name escaped him, except that he was pretty sure it started with a V.
“Hey, Dr. C!” she said brightly. “Are you guest-lecturing today?”
Gerald tried to twist his face into an expression that would somehow convey both that he was happy to see her and that bad news was coming.
“Hey,” he said. He sighed and bit his lip. “I’ll explain in a minute. It’s nice to see you, though.”
Two more minutes elapsed. It was now a minute past the hour.
“OK, everyone, please be seated,” he began. “As some of you know, I’m Professor Cutler. I’ve been asked to share some very, very bad news with you all.”
He waited a beat.
“Before I do so, I want to remind you that the campus mental health clinic is just down the street from us, in the Delvecchio Center. And I would encourage anyone who is struggling with depression, stress, or other challenging and debilitating emotions to consider seeking help there.”
He paused again.
“My news is that … just this morning…” This was coming out slowly, as if he were trying to build suspense, but the fact was that he was having trouble getting the words out.
“… Professor Stevens passed away,” he finished.
He looked out at the students. A couple started to cry visibly, but most simply looked stunned.
“With that in mind, this class is cancelled for today. However,” he continued amidst the sounds of people getting to their feet, “before you leave I’d like to just say a few words — in remembrance of Herb.”
The students solemnly sat back down.
“I have two, uh, items for you,” Gerald continued. “First, I want to tell you the story of how Professor Stevens got tenure here. This story is well-known to the biology faculty here, but I’d bet that most of you don’t know it.”
“Herb arrived at Conley in, I think, 1978 as a Visiting Assistant Professor, temporarily replacing another professor who was on sabbatical. It was just a one-year position, but during that year a tenure-track position opened up, and he applied for it and, after a nationwide search, he got it.”
Perhaps a clarification was needed. “This was all before I got here, plus I’m not an ecologist, so this is going to be light on details, but, anyway, this is how the story is usually told.”
“Herb knew that to get tenure — essentially the guarantee of a permanent job — he would need a minimum of one paper published in a good peer-reviewed journal. Having moved to this area, he now had an idea of how he could explore a fundamental principle of disturbance ecology right here in Hopwood Forest.”
“There was one big problem, though,” Gerald noted. “For Herb to test his hypothesis in a statistically rigorous way, he figured that he would need to monitor certain sections of the forest for four full years, and he would need the help of two thesis students every summer. And then if everything went well for those four years, he could write the paper and, with luck, get it accepted by a good journal by the time his tenure case was decided at the end of year six.”
“In short,” Gerald continued, “there was very little room for error. If the weather got really bad or really different one summer, the whole study would be thrown off. Or if he couldn’t find students to do their thesis with him, or if the journal didn’t accept the paper, he would be out of luck.”
“Nevertheless” — Gerald struck an expression of bemusement — “Herb believed that he had a unique chance to test an important scientific idea at the very location he happened to be in, so he decided to go for it. He would explain later that he didn’t consider himself to have a lot of great research ideas, so when he came up with this one he really wanted to pursue it. And he said he didn’t want to do boring science for five years just to get tenure.”
Gerald couldn’t tell whether the story was resonating with the students, but a few were nodding.
He forced a smile. “Of course, this story has a happy ending — Herb did publish his paper and did get tenure — so the weather must have mostly cooperated, and he didn’t have much trouble convincing students to spend a summer outside doing research with a pleasant, supportive mentor such as himself. But that third summer, disaster struck! One of the students who was supposed to work with him broke her leg at the end of her spring softball season, and so she wasn’t going to be able to tromp through the forest all day every day. The project seemed to be in jeopardy, and the poor student knew that and felt awful.”
“So,” he continued, “the student called Herb and said, ‘Professor Stevens, you probably don’t know this, but I have a twin’…”
Even in this twentieth retelling, Gerald couldn’t stifle a giggle.
“‘She’s an art major,’ the student said, ‘but she’s really smart and I’ve checked with her and her summer plans are cancelable. Would you consider using her as my boots on the ground?’ And Herb said, ‘Well, I’d love to meet her, at least,’ and, long story short, it all worked out. Herb brought the art major up to speed, and she was as capable as her twin had promised, and the data were collected after all.”
“Just think about that,” Gerald concluded. “The plot twist of a twin swap, which is rarely convincing when you see it in the movies, actually saved the day in real life. And Herb’s paper became a classic of the field. It’s been cited over 800 times.”
The students smiled and sniffed and shook their heads with incredulity.
“OK,” Gerald said, “here is my other item for you. It’s an email message that Herb sent out back when he was starting his stint as department chair, and when I was brand-new here.” He felt himself choke up again. “I saved it because I really liked it. Perhaps you will as well.”
He cleared his throat and read from his laptop.
“Dear Colleagues.
“As we begin another year, I believe that we will accomplish a lot together if we can all manage to do three things: be kind, be ourselves, and be kind TO ourselves.
“Sometimes these goals will completely align, and the greatest kindness that you can bestow on everyone, including yourself, will be to give us your unfiltered, unique insights and quirks. At other times you’ll need to bite your tongue and restrain yourself a bit more.
“There’s no easy recipe for keeping these things balanced. However, if we all strive for this balance, and if we all accept feedback from others about this balance, we will probably do very well indeed.
“Yours, Herb.”
Gerald looked up once more and tried unsuccessfully to speak, then tried again.
“I wish Herb were here right now,” he said, “to address us one more time. But,” he added, “those are his words, at least. Be kind, be yourself, and be kind to yourself.”
Gerald snapped his laptop shut, picked it up, walked out of the lecture hall down to his office, collapsed into his chair, and buried his face in his large hands.
[Update: the story continues with part 32.]
My Track Record 
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