Five days before receiving the email, a piece of student work was delivered
to my office by someone not enrolled in the class. At the request of my student, an intermediary presented me with a large cardboard box containing a locked tackle box. Unable to find a key for the lock, I went
to class prepared to return the box unless I was given a key.  I was slightly bothered (but not at all surprised) to find that the student chose not to attend class that day.  When I received the box, I suspected her with-
holding the key was a purposeful choice.  

Flash forward four days.  Approximately ten hours before I received the email from Giordano Bruno—a name that wasn’t familiar then but one I have since learned belongs to a little known 16th century philosopher, rhetorician, artist, and rebel —I received a phone call from a colleague at the university.  He tells me that there’s a strange smell coming from the
box in my office.

I am, to say the least, mortified.  Having spent, at that point anyway, the past 5 years encouraging students to choose the genres, media and modes that best suit the rhetorical work they hope to accomplish, I’d not encountered anything like this before.  I worry that any success I’ve had
will be overshadowed by or equated with the stinky box incident. 

I worry that others will think my pedagogy irresponsible, a joke. 

I phone my student to express my disappointment, to confirm that there’s nothing of value inside the box, and to let her know her work will be disposed of that evening.  My student, Muffie, isn’t there. The person who answers, someone I will learn later was part of the secret society of artistic project-makers, refuses to tell me what’s in the box, explaining that Muffie would be disappointed if I didn’t hold on to it till tomorrow when I’d receive the key.  She tries to dissuade me from throwing the box out, saying that Muffie had put a lot of time and work into it and added that “many people” would be disappointed if the box was lost.    

Had I not been so angry what happened next would not have happened. Rather than “face my fears and apprehensions” as the email advised, I took advantage instead of the fact that Monday was garbage night and had someone get rid of the box for me.  Unfortunately, the door to the outside dumpster was locked so the person I asked for this favor (and who, I later learned might not have a sense of smell) set the box next to the garbage can in the woman’s restroom. 

The janitors were understandably troubled when they found the locked, smelly box later that evening.  The campus police were contacted, the lock removed, and the box opened.  Its contents were written off as a college prank and the entire thing was finally disposed of.