Just So You Understand

Just so you, folks, understand what I’m dealing with, here’s a real-life story. I have two people at my department who really love a certain classroom. They love it so much that they refuse to teach anywhere else. Every year they drive everybody nuts with their demands to be assigned that particular classroom.

The problem is, they also want to teach at the exact same time. But there’s only one classroom they both insist on having. So today they came up with a plan and unveiled it to the administration. Here’s the plan:

1. They will both teach their different courses in that classroom at the same time.
2. The classroom is to be split by means of a “portable room divider.”
3. An additional teacher’s table with a computer should be brought in.
4. An additional screen should be placed on the wall.
5. And the pièce de résistance of the whole proposal – prepare for it – the windows in the classroom should be boarded up. Don’t ask why. I didn’t because I’d rather not know. Based on my experience, no joy happens when you start asking why.

You realize, I hope, that many other people teach in this classroom, so apparently, this entire set up should be taken down immediately after this one joint session. And then put up again. And then taken down. And then … And so on in perpetuity.

Welcome to my life, my dear friends.