My name is Harpo McGuffey.  I’m the new adjunct professor of journalism at Longwood.

Now I’ll bet you’re  expecting the inevitable six-thousand word shriek-fest about the death of print journalism and the loss of all of its august standards.  That’s not what I’m about; I don’t really care about the death of print journalism.  I’m not the type who spends the night huddled in bed with one arm around a bottle of Jim Bean and the other cradling my framed diploma from Colombia J-School.  First of all, I haven’t had a drink for ten years now — and second, my J-School diploma, from NYU, is forged.

But that’s neither here nor there, as I didn’t really get hired to teach an entry-level class about becoming a newspaper reporter.  Do you think a state-funded school cares about a profession that’s deader than vaudeville?  No, they hired me because of a little embellishment in the Special Skills section of my resume, a bit about how I helped suppress the Ebola epidemic while reporting in Zaire, Africa.  Pretty much the first thing they asked about in my interview was my “germ-fighting experience.”  I had to nod and smile, nod and smile, and give a condescending chuckle to help buy time until I figured out what the fuck they were referring to.

I didn’t really help to suppress the Ebola virus, per say.  I did go to Zaire, but it was only to report on how the disease had affected the oil trade in the Zaire region, and how this would affect American gas prices.  I didn’t even make the deadline for that story; it was all around the time my alcoholism was about to reach its big, black nadir.

Thus, I feel responsible to tell you, the students, that I don’t the first fucking thing about combating an epidemic, much less a pandemic.  I’m researching it all as fast as I can, but remember that I’ve got three sections of my class to teach, and I also have a long commute from Charlottesville.  An adjunct teacher’s life is not easy!

The important thing right now is that everyone stay healthy, avoid physical contact as much as possible, and tell your parents to stop calling the campus health chief, at least for a few months.  We got a deal?  You scratch my back, and I’ll scratch yours — and by scratch yours I mean put on a kick-ass end of the semester keg party to celebrate how we avoided the pandemic and I still have a paying job! Seriously, if I get through this, I deserve a drink or two.