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12/30/2005 Archived Entry: "an"
How to be an Anonymous Academic Blogger
Step One: Give your blog a cute-academic name: Dr. Insane, Chronicles of a Desperate Intellectual, Mister Grader, Is it Summer Yet?
Step Two: Tell your readers where you are by using cryptic clues: Big Southeastern U, Small Clueless Jesuit College, Anywhere America.
Step Three: Gripe about your students: "They don't read! They don't write! They want to know what their grades are! They talk in class! They have lives which don't center around what interests me!"
Step Four: Gripe about having to "work" when everyone thinks you are on vacation: "But unlike, lawyers, doctors, or construction workers, I READ during winter breaks!"
Step Five: Talk about going to MLA every year: "So, there I was standing next to Hot Shot Big Professor Who Blogs As Well, and I thought OMIGOD maybe he's the one who wrote me that rejection letter for the job I applied to at Super University Somewhere Back East Where Mom Lives!"
Step Six: Contemplate shutting down your blog every now and then: "Grumpy Colleague caught me blogging again. Maybe it's time I give this all up; after all, it’s been a whole year since I started (Please, readers beg me not to!)."
Step Seven: Take great public pride in helping that minority/disabled/clueless student see the light/get an A/realize his or her full potential (fill in your choice).
Step Eight: Make sure to share beginning of semester/end of semester anecdotes: "Worry Girl wrote in her final paper: Madam Ovaries! Ha ha ha ha." "Every semester I start off my course in Mid-Atlantic Literature of the 18th Century by reminding students that if I even catch them thinking about cheating, I will cut their legs off."
Step Nine: Every now and then tell you readers how much "your" students cheat, you ungrateful these students are and how they don't appreciate your brilliant insights into both the human condition and literature, and how hard it is for you to fail them (but how much they will learn from this failure).
Step 10: Make sure Inside Higher Ed blogs your site.
Replies: 4 comments
Wait, wait, wait -- that wasn't posted by the authentic comp mafia! Who's impersonating me???
Totally overlooked this entry earlier. But have to say, it's too funny -- too (sadly) true, as the virtual impersonator had the prescience to say.
If people can't figure out who the comp mafia is by now, well ... the comp mafia does not participate in any of the forementioned online activities, at least not as a blogger.
Said activities, rather, are on mafia's hit list. Yes, we have a bonafide hit list so watch out.
In fact, the comp mafia was in the bookstore the other evening, rolling her/his/its eyes at a guy walking up and down the middle of the bookstore, talking loudly into his cellphone, and every other word was "my student" or "my students don't get this, blah, blah, blah." At 9 pm at night, no less! I wanted to tell the guy to just give it a rest. And who says that professors don't like to hear themselves talk. The guy is lucky to still be alive.
Posted by c-m @ 01/08/2006 05:55 PM EST
the pathos of blogging in ten steps. nicely done.
Posted by chalk covered malcontent @ 01/02/2006 11:10 AM EST
Excellent. Let's convert this to a Perl script, start 20 or 30 psuedonymous weblogs, and see how many get in IHE!
Posted by cbd @ 12/31/2005 10:02 AM EST
That's so true. How about: Post replies on blogs without saying who you really are!
Posted by comp mafia @ 12/30/2005 08:22 PM EST