we're watching you, you know

Graduate students, as everyone knows, are completely paranoid. They worry about everything: whether they can compete against others at better institutions; whether their professors think them worthy; whether they'll ever get a job; whether their colleagues appreciate how truly witty they are in comparison with the rest of the mundane world. And in between, they fantasize about the life of a professor--a life filled, they think, with free time, with ingenious ideas about literature, with intellectual conversations and inspired drinks with friends.

And so. It was with the full knowledge of all these hopes and fears, I freely confess, that I embarked upon what was probably the best practical joke of my life.

What happened was that, long ago, as a graduate student, I observed that an up-and-coming hot grad student, J., had recently befriended my office mate. And together, indulging in all those fantasies about professorhood, they had conspired to smuggle a small bottle of fine whisky into the office, which--in flagrant disregard of school rules but in utter fulfilment of the professor-fantasy they held in their minds--they would periodically drink together, offering me none, while I, meanwhile, studiously advised my students and plotted my revenge.

What I did was compose a brief memo that looked and sounded very much like the memos we were accustomed to receiving from the nazi-director then supervising our work. I risographed the memo on cheap pink paper, using the very machine that all our memos were printed from, and I mimicked the tone of our director to the best of my abilities. The resulting memo said something like this:
______

To All TAs:

It has come to our attention that certain TAs have been drinking alcohol in their offices. The consumption of alcohol on campus is in direct violation of code 10A5094P. Any teaching assistants with information about this violation should come to our office directly for the purpose of snitching.

Signed,

Senior Nazi Supervisor, Ph.D.
_____________

Despite the header "To All TAs," I put the memo only in my office mate and friend's mailboxes. I knew it was certain to inspire panic--graduate students are a paranoid bunch, after all--but I thought that last line about snitching would certainly give away the gag.

But I was most satisfyingly wrong.

J., upon reading the memo, freaked out immediately, as I'd expected. She promptly assumed the memo was about her, and went around querying her friends about whether they'd heard anything.

And what she found out, of course, was that no one had received the memo but she.

When I returned to my office by about 4 pm that afternoon, she was in complete paranoid hysteria, desecrating the said supervisor, calling him a liar for attempting to draw her out by such means, and consulting the university Ombudsman at periodic intervals about her future as an Ex-Graduate Student Abruptly Thrown Out of Her Program for a Drinking Problem.

I was rather horrified at the damage my gag had accomplished--and in such short order, too. Although I must admit to a certain feeling of gratification....a feeling, indeed, which lingers still?

I did eventually confess the prank. I confessed at the point at which J. had decided that her best recourse was talking to the Nazi Director in person to explain her lapse.

I must admit her willingness to confront the situation scared me: what if our supervisor discovered that someone had been forging official-looking memos in his name? My own grad-school paranoia meant I couldn't let that happen. So I 'fessed up.

And it all ended well. J. and I are best friends now. Seriously. J. is probably my best friend on the planet.

Though she's still pissed about that memo thing.