Why This Professor Finally Lost It (A Memoir Preview)

The following is an exclusive preview of my upcoming satirical memoir. Names have been changed to protect the guilty.

Chapter 1: The Day the Projector Won

It was 8:47 AM on a Tuesday when I lost the ability to pretend academia made sense.

The projector—that ancient demon of failed presentations everywhere—had decided that today, of all days, would be the moment it would showcase every color except the ones in my PowerPoint. The students watched my carefully crafted slides transform into what appeared to be modern art by way of food poisoning.

“Interesting aesthetic choice,” muttered someone in the back row, probably thinking I couldn’t hear them. I could. I always could.

I had three options:

1. Continue as if neon green Shakespeare quotes were a pedagogical strategy
2. Cancel class and retreat to my office to question my life choices
3. Embrace the chaos

Reader, I chose chaos.

The Seeds of Satire

The thing about reaching your breaking point in academia is that it doesn’t happen all at once. It’s not a single moment of catastrophic realization. It’s a slow accumulation of absurdities that your brain catalogs without permission, building a mental database of “Things That Should Not Be But Somehow Are.”

The projector incident was simply the moment my database overflowed.

Exhibit A: The Committee Meetings

By my calculation, I had spent approximately 847 hours in committee meetings over the past decade. The topics discussed in those meetings could have been resolved via email in 847 minutes. But academia doesn’t do email. Academia does “strategic discussion” and “building consensus” and “tabling items for further consideration.”

I once sat in a two-hour meeting about the wording of a sign. A sign that, ultimately, no one would read.

Exhibit B: The Syllabus

My syllabus had grown to 27 pages. Not because I had that much to say about 19th-century literature, but because legal had required disclaimers, accessibility had required specific formatting, and someone somewhere had decided that a syllabus needed a section on “classroom community guidelines” that took four pages to essentially say “be decent to each other.”

Exhibit C: The Email Chains

I had 847 unread emails. This is not hyperbole. I know because I stared at that number every morning while my coffee grew cold, trying to summon the will to open them, knowing that 840 of them would be reply-all chains about things that did not concern me but somehow required my inbox space.

The Moment of Clarity

Standing in front of that malfunctioning projector, watching Romeo and Juliet’s balcony scene rendered in what I can only describe as “nuclear sunset,” I had a thought.

This would make excellent satire.

Every absurdity I’d cataloged, every meeting that should have been an email, every policy written by people who had never taught a class, every student email that began “Sorry I missed the last six weeks, can you catch me up?"—all of it was comedy gold.

I was sitting on a treasure trove of material and I hadn’t even realized it.

The student in the back row whispered something else. Probably making fun of my slides again. This time, I didn’t mind.

I was too busy mentally outlining what would become Prof or not, here I come!

The Writing Begins

That night, I sat down at my kitchen table with a glass of wine and started writing. Not academic writing—the kind with citations and hedged claims and carefully constructed arguments that took four pages to make a point that could be made in four sentences.

Real writing. Funny writing. The kind where you say what you actually think and trust your reader to laugh with you.

The first draft of Chapter 1 took two hours. It was rough and raw and probably too mean, but it was alive in a way my academic writing hadn’t been in years.

I wrote about the faculty meeting where we spent 45 minutes discussing whether to call it “fall break” or “autumn recess” (spoiler: we formed a subcommittee).

I wrote about the dean who sent monthly emails about “fostering a culture of innovation” while simultaneously requiring sixteen forms to change a lightbulb.

I wrote about my students, in all their frustrating, endearing, occasionally baffling glory.

And somewhere around midnight, I realized I was smiling.

A Warning to Future Satirists

Here’s what they don’t tell you about writing satire about your workplace:

First, someone will think it’s about them. Even if it’s not. Especially if it’s not.

Second, someone will think it’s not satire. They will send you a concerned email asking if you’re okay.

Third, you will receive invitations to speak at conferences about “humor in academia” by the same people whose policies you’re mocking. Irony, it turns out, is not universally detected.

Fourth, and most importantly—once you start seeing the absurdity, you can’t stop. Your brain has been trained to find the comedy in everything, and it will not un-train itself.

This is both a blessing and a curse.

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What’s your workplace breaking point story? Share in the comments!