There was always a lot of intense emotional energy in the lab. Some students were working feverishly on assignments. Others were learning exciting new things. There were tension and anxiety, frustration, excitement and stimulation in the air. The gray stone walls seemed to absorb some of it. When you came into the lab late at night or on the weekends, you could still feel some residual emotional energy as though it had soaked into the walls and was leeching back out again.
Patience was helping a student with a lab assignment. An Internet chat room absorbed Sherry Johnson's attention. I tried to catch her eye but she was too absorbed by the things going on in her browser to notice me. A student, who I vaguely recognized, looked up and began to move toward me as though he had an issue to be resolved when I spotted Frank's teaching assistant getting some papers off the printer.
"Hi, Angel. Is Frank in his office?"
Her name isn't really Angel. It is Anjali Chakravarthy, but I always pretended like I couldn't pronounce her first name correctly because Angel fit in better with my gumshoe persona. She gave me a look that said - We both know you can pronounce my name correctly and the only reason that you can get away with being such a jerk is that you are a professor. I ignored her look. After all, I'm a professor and can get away with being a jerk. It's one of those undocumented employee benefits.
"He was in there a few minutes ago."
"Thanks, Angel. I'll try to catch him before he gets away again."
Office environments run on unnecessary pleasantries: questions that don't need to be asked, answers that don't need to be given, vocal and visual reinforcements that sooth the insecurities of people made neurotic by excessive structure and close proximity. But it was easier to get along than to be a hold out for sanity so I made an effort in small talk.
Franklin Verus Haggerty was a new Assistant Professor that we had hired a year ago this Spring. He was a real find. Usually we fiddle around so long getting the announcements out that most of the top candidates are committed before we even start interviewing. So we sit through daylong interviews with the remainders and hope that someone of value has slipped through. It happens more often than you would think it does. Most of the top candidates are fresh Ph.D.s from top research schools like Minnesota or Arizona. We prefer faculty with a blend of academic and industry experience. We often find people who want to work in Washington D.C. or want to move to Washington or their spouse is moving to Washington. Real estate people say the only three things that matter in real estate are location, location, and location; and we've got location. We are in the heart of Foggy Bottom, on of the most prestigious areas in Washington, D.C. We are within a dozen blocks of the White House, Georgetown, the Kennedy Center, the Watergate Hotel, and the State Department. So it isn't a complete surprise when talent drops in our lap.
Frank Haggerty was one of those blessings out of nowhere. He had just spent two years in a contract position at American University. They would have offered him a tenure track position if they had one to spare, but times were tight and tenure tracks were hard to come by. We just happened to have a tenure track slot and little else to choose from so when we found Frank, we realized that blind luck was with us again.
Frank had excellent credentials. A Ph.D. from Carnegie Mellon, postdoctoral work at Hopkins and two years of teaching experience at American. On top of that, he had spent ten years in industry as a database administrator before getting his Ph.D. He was everything we could have wished for.
So far the students loved Frank. He seemed to relate to them at a level where most academics fail. He remembered how difficult it was for him to learn all that technical stuff and could always zero in on what was puzzling a student. And, as if walking on water in the classroom wasn't enough, Frank agreed to oversee our computer labs as system and network administrator. I couldn't believe our good fortune.
I knocked on Frank's door and heard some shuffling inside.
I amused myself imagining Frank inside with a radio transmitter looking like some extraterrestrial sending message back to home base as his fellow aliens plotted an invasion of earth. I have always had a problem with too much imagination.
In a few moments, he was at the door smiling and inviting me in. You couldn't help but like Frank. He was warm, personable, and charming. Unlike many academics that are bristly and arrogant, Frank was comfortable to be around.
"Frank," I said, "we've had a problem on the web site. Some of the pages are missing."
"That's odd. Which pages are missing?"
"As far as I can tell, it is limited to some faculty pages. If you could restore the faculty pages as of last Friday to a temporary directory I could go through and replace whatever is missing."
"I'd be happy to, but right now I am in the midst of reorganizing the system directories and setting up new user accounts for the incoming students. It will probably be two or three days before I can get to it."
"No problem. Just let me know when it is done."
I decided that if a few of my colleagues had to go a couple of days without their pictures online, they would find a way to survive. So I went back to my office and turned my attention to more important matters. In academia, time is never of the essence.