Students in Dr. Edward Nirvanaberg’s Buddhist Art History 201 class were shocked to find out on Tuesday that their “favorite” professor would be retiring two weeks into the semester. Walking into their 10:00 A.M. class, Students found a chalkboard message that simply said: “I’M FREE Y’ALL! THANKS FOR BUYING THAT STUPID BOOK, I’LL BE MEDITATING ON CARNIVAL CRUISE TILL I GET REINCARNATED, SUCKERS!” next to a poorly drawn image of the tree of life flipping them the bird. We asked MSU sophomore Jaxon Drayton for his opinion on his flaky professor. Shrugging, Drayton said:
“Yeah, I mean, I thought it was weird that we needed a $1300 textbook to pass the class.” Upon learning that the proceeds of the textbook went directly to Dr. Nirvanaberg, who authored the book himself, Drayton exclaimed: “Oh, is that why he was always ranting about ‘Stupid pirating websites getting in the way of his bottomless margs’?’’ We did not have an answer for him. After a long pause of realization, Drayton continued: “If anyone asked him about publishing the book as a PDF document, he would send them to the ‘mountains in Nepal, ’ which was just a ladder he kept in the corner of his room right next to the air conditioner. I don’t know how I didn’t see it.”
The textbook, titled, Eighteenth and Nineteenth and Some Twentieth Century Artifacts Depicting the Buddha and Why Their Stylistic Choices Matter in the Common Era: An Overview, was published in 1985 as Dr. Nirvanaberg’s doctoral thesis. It has served as the basis for his class ever since. Students are required to read it front to back for the first quiz of the semester. Dr Nirvanaberg has gone on record to state that he “has no clue why [his] class has the highest percentage of Credit no Credit students at MSU,” though he thinks it has something to do with the fact that the students “no longer appreciate the joys that come from understanding other cultures.”
We here at the Nut wish Dr. Nirvanaberg a wonderful retirement, and his students look forward to meeting him in the next life, where he will be “inevitably reincarnated as a great oak and chopped down to serve as the paper in another 40-year-old virgin’s passion project.”
