(Another classic from the mcarp archives… the prophetic genius and brilliance are his;
the ones/zeros, pixels, pictures and subheads and pull-quotes are mine.)
“You mean it’s not in Wisconsin?â€
The phone rang, and an intern picked it up. She listened for a moment, then put her hand over the receiver and looked at me.
“Where is Mount Everest?” she asked.
What am I, the World Book? “Tell ’em it’s in Wisconsin,” I replied.
“Nuh-uhhh,” a coworker interrupted. “Mount Everest is in Colorado.”
“Mount Everest isn’t in Colorado,” a third responded. “Pike’s Peak is in Colorado. Mount Everest is in Alaska.”
The intern turned back to me. “Where is it, really?”
Then I realized I didn’t know for sure which country it was in. So, I weaseled. “It’s in the Himalayas.”
“No, it’s not,” replied the coworker who had placed it in Alaska. “The Himalayas are in New York, and IÂ know Mount Everest isn’t in New York.”
(originally published by Michael Carpenter, republished with permission.)
You know, I would really like to believe that this was just some humorous fiction.
But I’ve seen this kind of ignorance up close and personal… and I work in higher-ed, even!