Before today's comp class, a student came to my office. She's quiet and smart and attentive, the kind of person you really appreciate in class. She told me that she has an assignment in her psychology class requiring her to do something embarrassing in public and then to observe the reactions of others. She wanted permission to do something today in my class. I approved. We worked out a plan.

During class, I handed out a short, in-class writing assignment. Janice spoke up loudly (as planned): "Do we have to do this?" I said yes. "Well, I don't want to! I'm sick of these assignments!" Now, come on, I said. At that point she took the assignment sheet, crumpled it up, and threw it back at me. Everyone's eyes got very big. People are looking at one another. The guys clustered in the back are looking around in surprise. I say something to reinforce the assignment, and Janice pounds loudly on the top of her desk: "Why don't you just go and watch a Hitchcock movie," she tells me in disgust. Now the silence from the rest of the students is pretty thick. Red faces all around. I'm handing out my remaining uncrumpled assignment sheets, and everyone is just staring down at their desktops in embarrassment. Janice puts her head down on her desk and pretends to cry. Everyone is totally silent.

I figured that there were no more reactions to get, so I let the whole class in on the prearranged plan. Suddenly, the rest of the class in their relief becomes more animated and talkative. Everyone then said what they thought had been going on. One student thought that Janice had had a car accident on the way to class. One guy in the back said that he was encouraging her to refuse the assignment. "You were doing it pretty quietly," I said. "Well, I was nodding my head to Nick," he said. Lesson for the day: Howard Payne students, even the ones who like to present themselves as edgy and rebellious, are really, I guess, under it all just very, very nice. They will be embarrassed and quiet and cast their eyes down to their desktops rather than cross a line and show anger or foment a rebellion. Even the football jocks. It was kind of sweet.

You know how on The Office characters are often shown alone in a room looking straight into the camera and confiding things to the home audience? First, we see them in some sort of mostly public situation that stresses the comedy of embarrassment. Next, there they are by themselves in a room facing the camera and saying something honest, something candid, something understated and funny. They naturally assume that all of life is being videoed all the time. They can't really turn to the camera when in company, but all the while they are living life they know we're watching and waiting for them to be alone, to turn to the camera, and to clue us in. We share their secrets and situations. They know there's a smart audience somewhere watching the movie of their life.

Nice concept.

Lately, I've been seeing the advantages of following suit. Seems like a good coping strategy. And how can I really be sure that there isn't some home audience somewhere tuned in just waiting for me to swivel in my expensive office chair toward some camera location only I know about and say, "You know, I would make a really lousy dean. I know that. I'm not enough detail oriented. I'm not political. I'm not good at brokering deals. I would be in way over my head. But if I get one more email like this [tapping the monitor], I'm sneaking over to the Academy late at night and covering the MacArthur statue with Obama stickers."

See? You can almost hear them in their living rooms. And you've vented. And you feel better. Almost.

I am sitting in my office. It is 9:45 or so on a Thursday, the last day before a long spring break. When I opened the double doors to my office, the little Shakespeare doll fell off the shelf on the bookcase behind the door and broke. A severed Shakespeare leg and foot resulted. I have thrown it away. Being an English professor, I sense this is a symbol. Of what?