Roderick N. Hess, a prominent education scholar and noted authority on whatever you were planning to write about this week, was found unharmed, brimming with enthusiasm, and dressed like a Cancun tourist on Sunday, following a worrisome twenty-four-hour period during which he failed to publish any new work.
After a half-hearted search of Arlington, Virginia by bored McCourt School of Public Policy grad students, Hess was discovered in his home office dictating an essay to nobody in particular. His personal laptop, which was still in its original packaging, lay untouched on the desk amid autographed stacks of his countless authored and edited books.
After spending the night in a local hospital, Hess told Education Week that the reason for his “editorial break” was that all twenty-five of his research assistants had vanished, and that doctors had told him to “take it down a few thousand notches” and avoid writing any books for at least seventy-two hours.
In a 2500-word missive published fifteen minutes later, Hess thanked readers for their concern and promised that, moving forward, he would “treat his long-suffering staff like the cage-busting research stallions they are.” He also shared a photo, taken shortly before he was discharged, showing him holding shards of clothing and a pair of scissors, having apparently cut his hospital gown into a pair of shorts and his slippers into sandals.
