Kendra said that her professor 'could go fu-'
""Kendra had several complaints abou-""
""Kendra expressed disapproval about some aspects of the instruction in her physics course.""
Part of my job, which involves talking with university students and offering academic advice, requires me to transcribe the details of these interactions into brief notes, which are then stored in a secure database for future reference. It's a singularly boring task in the way that only data entry can be, but when it was first described to me I pictured myself sitting in one of those massive, underground CIA surveillance bunkers that always appear somewhere in the first half of espionage thrillers, a misconception which was abetted by the dense legal jargon on the government forms I'd been required to fill out on my first day.
""Incoming message from Istanbul!"" I'd announce over my shoulder when taking a call, my hand covering the receiver while co-workers hurried around the darkened room, stubbing out their chain-smoked cigarettes and adjusting complicated recording equipment. ""It's one of their agents from the study abroad program.""
Unfortunately, the willingness of most students to share information without need of coercion made it difficult to maintain this illusion, as did the pedestrian nature of their questions and concerns.
On the rare occasion when a student did become emotional, accusatory or profane, we were encouraged to remain as neutral as possible on the subject, which usually led to me writing something like, ""Daniel disclosed that he was experiencing frustration about his business school application essay. I suggested that he meet with a writing tutor, and we discussed what we could do to get him to stop clenching his fists and lifting office furniture up over his head.""
During this time, one of my roommates was busy interning with a U.S. congressman, a job that also saw him fielding phone calls and letters. However, as opposed to the students I was working with, who were usually clean-cut and lucid, the public which he helped to serve included a much wider cross-section of humanity, most notably its backwoods militia-men and general conspiracy theorists, who tend to produce much more than their fair share of correspondence.
Whether politely answering their feverish, disjointed phone calls or reading through their handwritten dissertations on influential underground societies, the standards of his job also required a disciplined approach to recording these contacts:
""Name: Amelia Johnston
Contacted By: E-mail (ajjohns847x@gmail.com)
Subject: Elementary school funding bill""
""Name: John Doe [not provided]
Contacted By: Snail Mail [no return address provided]
Subject: Subliminal [illegible], ""The Beast"", [other]""
On most days I envied my roommate's privileged glimpses into the world of self-proclaimed prophets and would-be letter bombers, but when it came time to return voicemails I was thankful the people I worked with all met the minimum requirements of both owning a telephone and also being able to finish a thought without screaming into the receiver or suddenly throwing the handset across the room and diving into the linen closet.
It became particularly important that other people possess these kinds of communication skills, as on my first attempt at returning calls, I failed to reach any of the people who had left messages with our advising office, but did succeed in misdialing an elderly couple, an out-of-state trucking company and - once - my own university department.
I previously worried that our practice of condensing people's hopes, frustrations and occasional breakdowns into neutered predicates might be demeaning. But now, after having to confess my own blunders to six dozen strangers in short order, I hoped that these too would be boiled down, and filed away.
Send queries - whether academic or paranoid - to Matt at hunziker@wisc.edu.
