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In This Issue

• A Sneak Peek at Barnard’s New Vag
• Teacher's Pet Joins Elite Rank of CC Assignments
• Take a Ride on a Fiction Plane with Rachel Katz
• The Letters to the Feditor Strike Back
• What What (In The Butt): A Debate For The Ages
• Celebrity Beer Pong New To Network TV
• The Room-mate Chronicles
• C.J. Parker vs. Wolverine: Dispatches from the White House Correspondents Dinner 2008
• Columbia and the Perception of Self: A List of Stuff
• If I Were Graduating, I Would Be Thanking the Following People Whom I've Never Met
• Graduate Reflects: “Da faaaackkk???”
• A Message from the Next Chief Judge of the D.C. Circuit
• Don’t Forget to Bring a Towel, Experts Warn
• Therapist’s ADD Cured By Hourly Wage
• A Red Letter Day For the Green-Thumbed
• A Public Service Announcement from the Ad Council
• THEY Watch
• The Staff of 23.7

Researchers for the Institute for the Study of Advanced Deficit Disorder released a report yesterday on a woman whose lifestyle may provide a long-awaited breakthrough towards the cure of the pervasive condition. Martina Gondry, a therapist from Long Island, has found her own antidote for the effects of ADD by charging clients money in direct proportion to the amount of time she spends with them. Gondry's daughter, Scarlett Forman- Gondry, 16, alerted the Institute when she noticed a strong discrepancy between her mother's listening skills in different contexts. When speaking with Scarlett, Gondry would demonstrate a remarkable lack of interest within the conversation's first several seconds, often exhibiting either a wavering or undirected gaze. Yet, observing her mother in session during her school's sponsored Go To Your Mother's Work Day, Forman-Gondry found the same woman able to listen with rapt attention for over an hour at a stretch. Institute researchers were called in to observe and after only a few weeks of observation, they noticed a repeated pattern: "When her clients would leave, they unfailingly handed her some form of money - sometimes checks, sometimes cash - before exchanging some parting pleasantries," the report said, continuing "which Gondry never seemed to hear."

Her patients have expressed only admiration for their attentive therapist. An anonymous client reported that "from the very first ‘How does that make you feel?' to the final ‘Looks like we're out of time,' [Gondry] is concerned only with me. She's as focused as a laser right up until that clock goes off - gosh, what a listener."

Gondry's method has been described as a repeated process of soliciting money from others in direct proportion to the amount of time spent with them. The amount of time is simply multiplied by a predetermined constant of hard currency, subject to the solicitor's discretion. It has been suggested that Gondry's constant is relatively high because of the strength of her condition.

Families and friends of those affected with ADD are flooding Gondry's mailbox and inbox with appreciative letters of gratitude, some even paying her housecalls. Fiona Nimitz told the therapist in person that she had shown the way for her husband to rediscover life, to master his attention, to reconnect with his parents and his children, and to find many of the lost pets sought on "Reward" flyers nailed to telephone poles. "Oh, were you talking?" Gondry replied.

On vacation, however, the Gondry family often notices a direct reduction in the therapist's attention span. Joe Augustine, a broker for the New York Stock Exchange, noticed that his cousin would often stare off into space even mid-conversation if no one was handing her money, remarking "she looked like a contract worker."

Yet throughout her career, Gondry has never admitted that she acts differently towards her family and towards her clients. Forman-Gondry, unconvinced, told her mother that: "I went to the movies with Chet today, but I think he still likes Clara, but the movie was still good and I think we both liked it and you aren't even listening anymore and I'm pregnant but Grover Cleveland is the father so I'm moving to Guam and your lipstick makes you look like a whore and our second floor is on fire and daddy is fighting killer bees with chopsticks in the foyer," to which Gondry responded with a warm smile, "and that's why I love you, darling."