Dear Professor,

Let me say first that it was so, so great to get this research paper — such a wonderful culmination to class! However, I’ve been running into some logic problems since starting the assignment and as it turns out, I will not be able to complete it because we live in a post-truth society.

To be honest, before your “Working Women During WWII” seminar, I hadn’t thought much about working women during WWII. But then you gave us the paper and I immediately set out to learn as much as I could. I googled “Rosie the Riveter” and clicked on images, then I googled “Madonna in A League of Their Own” and clicked on images. But through all this fieldwork, I kept running into a big issue: facts don’t exist. Given the unchecked contrarianism and fabrication endemic to our socio-political climate, I just don’t think it’s possible to write an objective essay, which the assignment clearly asks for.

For example, I type the phrase, “When England fought in the War” but then I’m thinking, OK, but England — like the concept of England — didn’t fight. People did. Also, what’s war? Also, what’s the? So I google it, but who am I to referee the mad game of Truth versus Fiction.

I know what you’re thinking Professor: I am onto something. I agree. But also disagree. I take my studies seriously and turning in a paper that fails truth itself is just not something I’m comfortable doing. Like you said in class when you quoted Churchill, “The price of greatness is responsibility” and I have to be responsible. But also irresponsible.

To satisfy the class’s requirements, I’ve come up with an alternative assignment. Basically, I’ll take the topic I was going to use (Foxy Factory Females of the 1940s) and I’ll just make up some stuff. Therefore my work won’t fester in the Platonian shadows of impossible truth, and I can pass this required class. Like you said in that lecture when you quoted FDR, “Happiness lies in the joy of achievement and the thrill of creative effort.” Although, it also doesn’t.

I really appreciate you working with me on this Professor. Maybe the circularity of our fraudulent information sources will devour itself and a new dawn of fact-checked integrity will emerge, but probably not before Thursday’s due date.

Thanks!