The next step in Contesting Admission seemed rather obvious to me. Pummel the English Department into submission. In the words of President George W. Bush, this will be “shock and awe”. The plan was simple. Bombard the department with paperwork over all kinds. Inundating them with busy work to no end until the very machinery and inner workings of the department failed and collapsed from sheer exhaustion. This would be achieved with course petition slips, grievances, long rambling emails, hand written notes, and anything and everything I couldn’t find that required the department’s energy.
The energy around the department’s faculty was being depleted by the day, if not by the natural course of events of the semester, but from my own doing. But what exactly was I doing? The disconnect from what I believed I was doing, and what was actually happening only grew by the day, and by semester’s end, a new exciting reality was born through my eyes only. Now that is was totally clear that the department wanted nothing to do with me, and I would need to crate new language (meta-power) to alter the admission decision, I was angry. In my opinion, if I couldn’t have language I would destroy it.
“What did you do this time, Jacques?” Students would ask me as they passed me by the in the department corridor. I was almost certain they knew what I was doing. In the beginning of the campaign, I was more clear, or at least, more direct about my intentions. I would remark simply: “oh, you know, dropping bombs!” Later on, as my condition worsened, I was less direct a lot things: “Pufff!” I would say, gesturing with my hands as if a bomb was exploding in the department with only the gesticulations of my hands. But these students had no idea what I was talking about with my arbitrary noises and hand gestures. No idea whatsoever.
Everyday, I ramped up the bombing campaign. More notes! More emails! More everything! This was until my health worsened to the point in which my notes and emails were completely indecipherable. Unreadable. But by then the semester was almost at an end. And it seemed, through my eyes, that I had won. Professor’s offices were shut or closed. Most the department was vacant, or vacated, I thought, by the dwindling presence of faculty in the department. Alas, this was due to the pending summer break, the university calendar, and not the metaphorical bombs over the English department at New London.
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Categories: Adventure, Cover Stories, Education, Entertainment, Lived Experience, Manifesto, Misadventure
Mental Health Affairs 