Look at that couch. Beautiful. Majestic. Orange. A symbol of everything good and pure in a world that is often less than good and pure.
Kind reader, I’d like to introduce you to something right in a world gone wrong. Oh reader, I give you my new office couch.
Let the image breathe. Take it in. The couch.
***
I’ve got money to burn. But it can only burn on certain things. When professors such as myself get hired at institutions such as the institution I was hired at in 2022, they negotiate a startup package. This is money that can be spent towards items that might help a professor with their research agenda. Startup money is usually spent on items such as computers, graduate students, conference travel, research tools, etc.
I am in the social sciences. Social scientists study people. English Education is a social science not a hard science because it involves people. The hard sciences, fields such as Physics, Biology, or – God forbid – Geometry, often need things like labs or telescopes or – God forbid – abacuses. I don’t need those things to do my research. I just need people. Therefore, it is less obvious to me what to spend my startup money on. One can buy only so many poetry anthologies. Still, spend my startup money I must. The money is only good for three years before it is reabsorbed by the institution and spent on things such as labs or telescopes or – God forbid – abacuses.
The staff assistant reminded me that I still have some money to burn. I was already aware that I could use the money for office supplies. A thought came to me earlier this fall. What if I bought a couch for my office?
This wasn’t an original though, kind reader, and I should give credit where credit is due. My friend Andrea at Penn State had a gorgeous couch in her academic office. Her academic office decor inspired me to ask the staff assistant if I could buy a small couch for my office.
“The money is yours,” they shrugged, “you can buy whatever you want.”
A quick Google search led me to the couch in the image above. I sent a link to the staff assistant.
“The only color left is orange,” they told me.
“Order it!” I shouted over email.
The couch arrived a week later. Another staff member in the office assembled it for me. I placed it underneath the window.
I sat on the couch immediately. It was hard as a rock. I didn’t care, reader. What a beautifully human addition to my academic office. I now have two small, comfy chairs across a little rug from a small, orange couch.
“Come and check this out!” I shout at strangers on the street. “Come look at my couch.”
Cool, they say. Or something like cool. I don’t know if they actually think my couch is cool. But I think my couch is cool.
***
My previous high school classrooms had two of my great-grandmother’s chairs on one side of the room. And three other chairs and a small coffee table. I loved that sitting area in my classroom. A small living room. I’d sit and talk with students about this and that. Hold writing conferences. More importantly, students would sit and talk with each other in that space. It was homey.
One of my colleagues at Iowa laughed at me after meeting my new couch. They told me my office felt like a therapist’s. I laughed. Good.
A space where people can connect across difference with some relative degree of comfort despite the cold world around us? That seems like a good space.
So let this blog be an ode to my beautiful, orange couch. She may not be comfortable. And she might not be large enough to fall asleep on. But she adds just a little bit of humanity to the often stifling world of institutions. That is a good thing.
Samuel Jaye Tanner 