Everything you wanted
to learn at university
but didn't.

1. The overeducated janitor sensed that the end was near. He felt it in the same way that you can feel the closeness of a wall without actually touching it, with your shoulder, for example, just millimeters away. And, the overeducated janitor had read enough novels to know how it ends. The room, at the end of the story, is empty. Empty and tidy. So tidy, in fact, that it feels like it is no longer lived in. The bed is carefully made. The clothes are neatly folded, nestled in

It had been over a month since the overeducated janitor had last checked his email. What was the point? Nobody was writing him back. More than a year had passed since he left The Almost Ivy League University, and he still hadn’t heard back from any of the seventy-three teaching and research jobs that he had applied to. His research grants had all been rejected due to a lack of institutional affiliation. He tried to defend his trade as an independent researcher, but, from the

There’s something to be said about saying nothing at all. “It’s Over,” Tom Waits 1. It was the second time in less than a month that The Big Boss instructed me to get the bolt-cutters from the backroom. There was yet another lock to cut from a locker. This time it wasn’t a client, much less an archenemy. This time it was one of us. This time it was Arturo. For several weeks his lungs had been acting up again. He started to do things that were out of character for him, things

I The overeducated janitor never had an enemy before, much less an archenemy. Sure, here and there, there were people whom he didn’t get along well with, certain personality types even, the arrogant, the selfish, the extroverts, the attention seekers, for example, but his social circles had always been wide enough, in punk, at The Punk University, in community organizing, to steer clear of troubled waters, to circumvent conflict, to troubleshoot enough to ensure that the occa