Steamed

The woman next to me was in another of my classes, and I remembered her telling my Research Methods class last week that she had left her job as a CPA and had a field placement at a homeless shelter.
    Professor Buckley entered the room and instructed the class to move their chairs into a large circle, a ploy I hated, a transparent technique meant to encourage participation. So now I couldn’t hide in the back and watch the minutes tick by. Professor Buckley pulled his own chair into the circle and sat back. We all waited for him to start lecturing or leading or doing something. Anything. But he just sat there, expressionless, looking around at his students. We all looked around at each other, wondering if perhaps our professor was having some sort of amnesic episode. Uncle Alan was paying for this ?
    After another few minutes, the change-of-career student next to me spoke up. “Should we be doing something?” she asked expectantly.
    “This is it,” our professor said. “We are doing it.”
    Students looked at one another in confusion. Oh, shit. I wasn’t confused. On the contrary, I knew what was going on here. This was supposed to be some sort of self-analytic group where we all “processed” what was happening in the “here and now.” I’d read about this crap in college psych. We were in for a long two hours.
    Students began trying to get the professor to elaborate, but his only responses were things like “This is the group,” and “There is no agenda,” statements that did little to appease his annoyed class. I decided that I could sit there and listen to the squabbling or I could do something to make time fly by faster.
    “Okay, I know what this is,” I announced with unusual boldness. The class stopped talking and looked at me. “This is some sort of Gestalt therapy thing where we discuss what’s happening right now, the dynamics of the present, and lots of other abstract stuff. How we’re relating to each other, blah, blah, blah.” I was barraged with questions and could only reply that since this was a course on group therapy, we were apparently expected to partake in our own group therapy process right here. Groans and whispers followed. The professor smirked and nodded his head slightly.
    “So what are we supposed to talk about?” demanded a man from the other side of the room.
    I said, “Anything we want. I think that we determine how to use our two hours.”
    We all sat there quietly, waiting for someone to come up with a topic.
    “All right,” I started. “How about this,” and I launched into the story of Eric’s murder. I omitted the details of my kissing bonanza with Josh, and in accordance with the Code of Ethics of the National Association of Social Workers, I changed everyone’s name to protect privacy, even though in reporting the murder, the media had used real names. In a flash of genius, I dubbed Eric “Mr. Dough.” Faced with this audience of students, all glued to my every word, I realized that I did need impartial advice. Maybe this group could help absolve Josh of any wrongdoing in Eric’s murder. After I finished, I sat back and waited.
    “I heard about this on the news,” someone said. “And they still don’t know who did it, right?”
    I nodded.
    A tall brown-haired woman spoke next. “I’m Gretchen, and I’m a first-year student here.” Continuing slowly and emphatically, she said, “As a social worker, my first concern would be to address your feelings of loss and find out whether you’re having any symptoms of post-traumatic stress.” Although she seemed like a caricature of the touchy-feely social worker, her sincerity was apparent. She continued. “Death is hard on all of us.”
    The rest of the class nodded in sanctimonious agreement, thus tempting me to rebel by arguing the opposite, namely, that death was easy on all of us if we were survivors who hadn’t known or cared about the deceased. Or had outright hated the deceased. Exactly how hard was death on the murderers who caused it? What if they weren’t remorseful at all, but were thrilled with the consequences of their deeds?
    Gretchen went on. “And I think that one of the ways we cope is through denial. Denying the grief that we’re experiencing deep down. I wonder if maybe you’ve been so caught up in pleasing Mr. Dough’s parents and everyone else that you’ve failed to take the time to process how this experience has affected you?”
    Oops. While I’d been summoning