Our first night in San Francisco, we met up with a former-professor-turned-friend for dinner. In her usual unflinching way, she turned to me and said, “So, your blog stopped being about anything right about the time the market opened.” I can’t argue with that at all*.
I notice that this sort of blog death is becoming a tradition of sorts for bloggers in their market years, and some never recover from it. It’s an understandable problem: you absolutely cannot write about your applications, your interviews, your prospects, your campus visits, or the negotiation process without seriously violating the professional code surrounding job searches. The process eats up every single brain cell you have, leaving you with not much else to talk about. And it’s coupled with a wildly increased awareness of panopticism, of committees performing the sort of due diligence they’re responsible for by thoroughly crawling your web presence. In the midst of all that, nothing feels safe to talk about.
And I can see how the process of becoming a new colleague and wending one’s way through the tenure process would continue those pressures. I suspect they will for me, but I also know that I want to continue writing here. I don’t want my blog to end when grad school ends, but figuring out how to comfortably continue it will demand some thought on my part. I’m curious about your thoughts on some aspects of the market process. I want to do some thinking about intersections of blogging and grad student professionalization. I want to natter on about the usual stuff, about research and cooking and moving.
About that last bit: I accepted a position and yes, we’re moving this summer. So are quite a few other people, but I notice that very few of us feel comfortable with mentioning it online. This has been the case for almost every academic blogger I’ve known. I can’t really put a finger on the source of my own discomfort. Is there a reason not to talk about this, once the contract is signed?
*Although hey, yes I could, since she’s also mentioned that she’s assigned the post on Creativity, Dark Matter, and Serendipity to her graduate capstone class. Therefore, it must be about something.
About Krista
Welcome to Thinkery, est. 2003. At the moment, I'm an Assistant Professor of Rhetoric and Writing at Syracuse University. I'm interested in new media, historical conceptions of authorship, and human/machine agency. I write about all of that elsewhere, mostly, and keep this space for other areas of investigation about the world: namely, cooking, gardening, and travel.flickr
I have a question. Is this something you’re seeing on blogs of folks who use their real names? because I started my blog without my name (although I haven’t been rigorous about hiding my identity) but I have NEVER blogged about my work life except for the occasional post about an idea. It might make my blog less compelling than some, but I’ve always had to assume that students, colleagues and the taxpayers would be right up my nose if I wrote something real about the kinds of things you’ve mentioned. Not that I haven’t wanted to, but it’s just a no-go. I’m finally feeling comfortable enough after a few years that I could put my name on the blog. It’s why I had to stop Facebook after just a few months. Ew.
There are quite a few full-identity academic bloggers, particularly in Rhet/Comp and New Media circles. There’s a line that we all pretty much respect about what constitutes bloggable “work life.” No posts about department culture or conflicts or institutional political shenanigans. Rarely will you see any unflattering commentary about specific individuals. But there is also an effort to be more transparent about the things that might be discuss-able: admissions and tenure processes, publishing issues, professionalization, acceptance rates for conferences / journals / presses.
I started out with a completely anonymous and genderless blog and then gradually became full-identity over the years. My sense – thus far, after 6 years – is that if you’re careful, this can be professionally useful if you want to connect with / be known as a digitally engaged scholar. I’m one of many who put their full name and institutional affiliation on their shingle. But just as many people choose to be anonymous, and either way, there are some things you just don’t say in this sort of public, personal medium.
I’m curious: what in the post pushed your buttons? I hope I made it clear that I have no intention of discussing any specifics of my market year, although I do have some questions about broader aspects of the market process. (For instance, even though I did a goodly number of preliminary interviews, it worked out that I did not go to MLA. I wonder what the broader trends in Rhet/Comp are in this direction.) Professionalization seems like fair game. And my new department is very aware of how I handle identity on my blog, and I think they’d find it odd if I suddenly cloaked it here.
i have always read your blog as one that teaches me a lot about doing the kind of work I aspire to do in the digital humanities, whether you posted frequently about the details of your project or not. But that is not the only, or even the main reason I read it. I like your writing, you post great photos, and you’ve been very generous with your pedagogical experiments.
I think the term “blog death” took me aback, especially as I’m in the process of discovering so many worthwhile and generous academic blogs that are teaching me a lot about a variety of things. There may be an arc of engagement/disengagement with a blog; as in writing a novel one may reach a point where it is done. I’m at a point where I want to write about more substantive issues, yet I feel constrained by the the desires of family on the one hand and a sense of professional ethics on the other. So I guess I’m asking some of the same questions you are.
I wouldn’t have expected you or anyone else to blog about the details of the job search, unless they were doing so as a pseudonymous blogger and keeping things vague.
Thanks for such kind words! Collaborator D & I were wondering about this the other day – “this” being the ramifications / benefits of letting more than just one’s academic self show on a blog. We both think it’s good, but have to work on articulating why. (Meeting people like you is clearly one reason!)
Re blog death & arc: I think you’re right. Some just come to a natural end. But I’ve watched quite a few Ph.D. Candidate blogs abruptly end with a job search or contract signing. There’s a sudden, long silence, then apologies, and then either protracted limping or a shutdown. And I think it comes from this transition feeling so fraught and one’s identity shifting in ways that are sometimes rather significant. That’s what I’m trying to sort out for myself… a way to keep going while accepting a more professional label. And maybe not much change is really called for. Dunno.
fwiw: I think it would be awesome if you wrote about the things you want to write about, and I’d be very curious to see what you have to say. I think you’d see some definite payoff. (But of course I also have no idea about your family and departmental pressures.)
Sort of on a tangent…
As a non-academic blogger, I have some related concerns, but in the personal realm: how much do I expose other people (family, friends), how much do I write about the publisher I work for–and then, the ever-present question, how much do I expose my own private self? How much do I even WANT to?
I fret about this a lot. (I don’t use my full name on my blog, but I still know it’s me out there!)
I’ve been thinking lately about how much or whether I like the Sedarises (Amy & David), and while I don’t at all like what looks to me like flagrant cruelty, I do adore their “fuck it” approach to their own privacy.
I guess I’d say I want to be braver like that, but keep it based in kindness.
And then, to wrap up: while neither of you write very personally on your blogs, there’s *more* than enough “something” in your writings that I ended up meeting both of you because of your blogs, so here’s to that!
Let’s get together and toast Krista’s new job!!!