It's a small town after all

Yesterday, after spending 6 hours navel-gazing about diversity and technology in the classroom, the esteemed faculty were invited to a colleague's house for a Halloween party. Actually, it's a pair of colleagues but only one is in my department. Turns out I should have asked the other one for directions.

As some of you know, the Spudmobile is back with Mr. PotatoHead, so whenever I want to go somewhere, I have to either pop in the "Hiking Boot" attachment (sold separately) or bum a ride. My usual ride is another new faculty member whom I will call Dr. Bones.

By way of giving directions, our host took us to the large window on the eastern end of the Sciences building and waved vaguely towards a brown house up on a ridge. This is the Gunni equivalent of a Somervillite telling you they live in the white frame house near the Dunkin' Donuts (i.e., completely useless).

But we'd teased a couple of other identifying characteristics from our colleague and thought we knew where we were going. The house was, by his reckoning, only a mile from campus. No problemo.

There ought to be a word for the specific kind of lost you are when you know exactly where you are but the place you're looking for is not where it's supposed to be. We drove around a while being that particular kind of lost until we saw a not-at-all brown house not-at-all on a ridge with a bunch of kids out front. Out of desperation, we pulled in, thinking that if it's not the right house they may know how to direct us to their neighbors.

It wasn't, of course, the right house, but the kids go fetch an adult to help us out. And who should the adult be...but a student of mine who had been AWOL for the last couple of days. Student has in fact decided to withdraw, so while Dr. Bones calls the other host to get directions that actually make a lick of sense, I have an incredibly awkward conversation with this poor student who really did not expect to have to explain her life plans to her professor in her driveway in front of her kids and all their friends.