College!

I’m writing a book with one of my longtime collaborators. It is humor. It is improv. It is madness. That’s the kind of work I do with this longtime collaborator who, for the purposes of this short blog, shall remain nameless.

Anyway, our idea is simple. We wanted to create a book that is entirely written in emails. Set in a college. A campus novel. Campus satire.

We spent the spring replying to each other’s emails. The book centers around a graduate student trying to change advisors. At least it began that way. About ten pages in, thing went off the rails. And then three-hundred pages of insanity ensued. As they often do when I work with this particular longtime collaborator.

I can’t tell you how hard I laughed at some of their emails. Sometimes we’d call each other after a particularly insane exchange. We wouldn’t say anything. We’d just laugh together. My friend lives about 1,000 miles away. So laughing across time and space was spectacular.

Something kept happening as we wrote this book. We realized that, despite the madness of our exchanges, they really weren’t that far-fetched. The actual emails we received – both of us work in colleges – were almost, if not more, bizarre than what we were sending each other. And while we worked really hard to disguise people, places, and ideas, the ridiculousness of our own experiences in college did find their ways into the book.

Academia is a strange space.

***

I won’t spoil any of the book for you. Even though it is probably at least a year or two away from coming out. And I want to protect the innocent. But I also want to give you a sense of the real life emails we forwarded to each other as we wrote this spring. And some of the crazy things that happened to us.

Somebody forwarded me the email from the associate dean who wrote a heartfelt reaction to another campus shooting, only to forget to erase that this reaction was written by an AI ChatBot at the bottom of the email. Tragic. Hilarious.

Another email included information about a stranger that might or might not have been living in the bathroom of one of the buildings on campus. And, according to the email, had been doing so for weeks.

Then there was all the jargon. Form emails that used three or four paragraphs and didn’t actually communicate anything. Statement emails. Update emails. Mental health, wellness, DEI, all the jargon-y emails that come in and out of our inboxes.

The emails from students. “I can’t be in class today, is there like anything I should do professor?”

One of my students this semester told me they had a professor who used to reply to their emails with “I hope this email tickles your inbox.” I’ve been laughing about that for a month.

Here’s the kicker. And the reason I’m writing this blog. Forgive me, but these next few sentences are not safe for work. Or for school. Or for any of us. My collaborator and I may have learned of a graduate student that walked in on another graduate student in the grad student office as the first graduate student was, to be discrete, taking care of themselves. I just looked up euphemisms for masturbation on Google. Double-clicking the mouse came up. I spit my decaf coffee.

What can you do with that but laugh? Or cry? Or file a lawsuit. There’s plenty of lawsuits that get filed in our book.

***

The first draft of our book is finished. I’m actually looking at a manuscript on my desk. We wrote it fast. Improv. It was joyful to dream up.

Now comes the hard work of preparing the manuscript. Cleaning it up. Formatting it. There’s all sorts of other things I have to do. But I’ll make time for this project because it makes me howl with laughter.

Colleges are strange places. I suppose other places are strange too. But there’s a tradition of campus satire that we’re leaning into. Straight Man by Richard Russo has become one of my all-time favorite books, though I’m less impressed with its adaptation Lucky Hank. I love Bob Odenkirk, but the series doesn’t capture the insanity of the book.

I’ve had lots on my plate this year. This book has been one of the few things that makes me laugh so hard I can’t talk. That kind of laughter is very, very important. It’s serious business. I’m excited to share our work with the world, thought it will likely take some time. And it isn’t for the faint of heart. Nor are the things I shared above.

Academia. What a strange space.