Weighing the risks

Everybody seems to be talking about an article by "Ivan Tribble" in the Chronicle of Higher Education: "Bloggers Need Not Apply." It warns academics away from blogging:

Our blogger applicants came off reasonably well at the initial interview, but once we hung up the phone and called up their blogs, we got to know "the real them" -- better than we wanted, enough to conclude we didn't want to know more.

Naturally, this is of some concern to me. I started blogging early in my undergraduate career, and my identity has never been hard to figure out. Forget tenured v. untenured blogging; I haven't had my undergraduate research seminar yet.

On the other hand, I've always been miserable in interviews anyway. The context-free sales pitch described (recommended) in this article has never treated me kindly. I really don't think I have much to lose.

Furthermore, I think other LETU students may agree with me that any publicity for students in humanities programs as minimalistic as ours is good publicity. If we can demonstrate some degree of competence and familiarity with our fields, even tangentially, we will be doing ourselves a favor. That is why I haven't tried to bury this blog and start over anonymously. I actually want my name attached to something.

One other thing. I agree with Brandon entirely: "I'm not sure I'd want colleagues who are so far behind the times that they'd make such odd inferences. ... What sort of crazy, sour-faced, self-righteous department would that be?"

| Posted by Wilson at 21:59 Central | TrackBack
| Report submitted to the Communications Desk