EVANSTON—Northwestern University prides itself on its nationally acclaimed theater program. Widely recognized by students across the country, Northwestern theater prepares young artists to cope with rejection, the typical outcome of real-life performance auditions. One hopeful freshman, Jeff Sachs, is actually convinced that I was aware of and had time to attend The Taming of the Shrew, a student-organized show he worked on.

Sachs, a dazed theater major, clearly faltered in logic with that thought, failing to recognize that my attendance at his show would have been statistically impossible. This is a common mistake, it would appear.

First, consider the amount of time a college student works. Multiply that value by eight to determine the time a Northwestern student spends working. By this logic, the average NU student works 169 hours per week, or one hour more hour than the total amount of hours in one week. Next, multiply the number of performances in one quarter by two hours, the average length of a production. Given the amount of performances nightly, this time value overflows most standard calculators.

Some have sacrificed their grades in an attempt to attend all the performances. In addition, it has caused cast members from different shows to engage in intense competition. They lure audience members by whatever means necessary, even resorting to violent threats. One anonymous audience member voiced his concern: “I literally saw ten shows in one night because I have a lot of friends who are theater majors. I thought I was being a good guy, supporting the performers and everything, but apparently I wasn’t. When I woke up the next morning, someone had spray painted ‘the cast of Eclipsed knows you weren’t there’ and ‘the theatre community will make you pay, jackass’ on my door. I really am scared for my life now.”

Jeff Sachs, you silly young artist, are you serious? If there were a million hours in a week, chances are good that I still would have been unable to attend The Taming of the Shrew. Sachs is simply “dream[ing] the impossible dream” like Don Quixote did in Man of La Mancha—for the few of you that had the chance to see the NU show.