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I’m going to follow in Squadratomagico’s glitter-dusted footsteps and begin to password protect some of my posts — particularly those relating to my ongoing adventures in professional hell. I’m very happy to share the password with loyal readers so please email me. I have a new email: bttrswt02 [at] gmail [dot] com.
If you have emailed me previously about the password, I am going to continue to use the same one.
I’ve been a bit alarmed by the extraordinarily large amount of blog traffic my previous post has received today. Something about hundreds of anonymous folks traipsing by to gawk at my humiliation has left me a bit queasy. So, I’ve password protected the post and if anyone wants to view it, you’ll have to send me an email to get access.
I don’t know if I’ll continue to do this or not. I’m just feeling a bit vulnerable right now — but I also continue to be really grateful to everyone who left kind words of support.
I’m going to take a break from blogging. I didn’t blog on my vacation (of course) and ever since I got back, I’ve been feeling distinctly uninspired. Every thing I consider blogging about seems boring and silly. I am boring myself with my imaginary blog posts — always a bad sign.
So, I’m going to sign off for a while — undoubtedly to return as soon as some particularly annoying job-related event transpires, which requires some anonymous bitching.
In the meanwhile, stay cool, yo.
This is making the email rounds but it’s too precious to pass up ..
DO NOT DO THIS!
I don’t know what is making me happier on this beautiful, auspicious day …
Obama being sworn in …
Or finally seeing the back of this motherfucker …
I am so relieved I don’t have to actively hate Bush any more.
America, I see a new sun rising.
more animals
Hooray! The lines were long. There were more blacks than whites (although I do live in a black neighborhood). There were lots of folks with their kids — and I just can’t believe anyone brought their kids along to say, “Okay, little Suzy, now we push the button for that nice old man, McCain.”
Feeling hopeful, when I’m not feeling absolutely terrified.
Oh yeah. He’s the man.
I’ve been in something of a blogging slump lately. I’ve been feeling disillusioned about blogging when the whole world seems to be falling apart — it just seems so self-indulgent to write about my petty concerns at this moment in time. And, for some reason, my intense book avoidance (which is to say, my absolute inability to work on the necessary book revisions while my tenure clock ticks loudly in my ear) got transferred to this blog, as well. I felt that if I had time for blogging, I should be using it to work on the book and since I couldn’t work on the book, I wouldn’t blog. Or some equally tangled logic.
But, yesterday I was reminded of one of the reasons I started blogging in the first place.
Yesterday I watched Jill Bolte Taylor on Oprah. (No, I do not usually watch Oprah but I tuned in for Dr. Taylor.)
If you have been living under a rock and don’t know who Jill Bolte Taylor is, watch this before proceeding.
Like many of you, I received this clip in my email inbox a few months ago and was really blown away. Her story, which is so inspiring and beautiful, also got me thinking about right/left brain issues. I am definitely a left brain kind of a person. I prefer order, organization, structure, and logic. But, in my youth I was also a pretty creative person. I wrote a lot, daydreamed a lot, dabbled in various arts, played a musical instrument, and generally considered myself an artistic individual. Lately, I’ve felt that my right brain impulses have been squelched by the necessarily left brain aspects of my life and job. I think the sheer effort to publish in the quantity necessary to get tenure at my institution, the constant working schedule with few breaks to indulge the imagination, the stress and anxiety … have eroded something of my creativity.
One of the reasons I started blogging was to have a space in which to explore my creativity once again. Now, you could certainly argue that blogging is not terribly right brain, what with it involving language and technology. But, for me, just to write in a quasi-fictional, quasi-autobiographical format and to play around with the various memes and themes of the blogosphere, was a kind of liberating experience.
So, watching Dr. Taylor yesterday and reflecting upon how much I want — and need — to reawaken that part of me that isn’t bound down to deadlines and isn’t subject to a tenure review … well, maybe the Bittersweet Girl part of myself should try blogging again.
I got ‘em.
I got ‘em bad.
If you don’t hear from me for a while, look for me down at the crossroads … I’ll be the one making a deal with the devil.
My humble little blog has been getting a fair amount of traffic lately by people who are directed towards my anti-cosmetics rant after employing search terms like “cosmetic testing: the against argument” and “people against cosmetics” (just two recent examples). I wrote the anti-cosmetics post because it’s an issue I’ve been thinking about recently and I wanted a venue in which to develop and express my opinions. I didn’t think of it as categorically different than any of my other blog posts, but now I wonder if I didn’t produce an infinitely plagiarize-able piece of writing.
Could it be that freshman English students across the country who have been assigned one of those standard PRO/CON controversial social issue paper on, say, animal testing or cosmetics, are turning to my blog as an ideal source for “borrowing” from?
I know that my own students, who are plagiarizers of the first degree, will steal language from any source on the web, from published academic books and articles to “buy your own paper” sites to some random dude’s homepage. So, personal opinion blog posts are fair game — more fodder for the “I don’t have to think if I can find it on the web” generation.
Having spent many hours of my life googling my students’ papers over the past few years, I’ve often stumbled across web pages put up by other academics, clearly for the use and benefit of their own students, but employed for nefarious ends by my own. I’ve wondered whether these academics are aware of how their websites are being used and even considered contacting them to let them know.
Here’s a mock email I might send:
—
Dear XXX,
Recently I discovered that one of my students had plagiarized from your website on [major author / text / historical period]. My student copied [a great deal / a small amount / the entirety] of the information provided on your site. It appears that you created the website for the use of your own students, perhaps to share your notes, to provide helpful contextual information, to direct their reading or research, or even to summarize the insights they developed during class discussion. These are all laudable pedagogical uses of the web. However, your site is now being misused by my students and, while the responsibility clearly rests upon my students to comply with academic standards and upon me to teach them how to locate and cite appropriate sources, it might also be worthwhile for you to either take down the site, if it is no longer in use, or, at the very least, remove it from internet indexes so it cannot be found by students like mine who simply google [major author / text / historical period] and easily find your site.
Sincerely, The Bittersweet Girl
—
What do you think? Too hostile? The hostility is generated by my cheatin’ students but eventually it tends to spill over onto anyone associated with their plagiarism, even the unknowing, innocent source.
But, come on, all those website academics put up a few years ago when the web seem so new and fresh, and then walked away and forgot about … leaving them as fair game for cheaters … it does piss me off. We don’t need to make it any easier for them.
Which leads me back to my blog post on cosmetics. I like that post. I spent a lot of time on it. It reflects my thinking process, the slow crystallization of my opinions. But, I’m very tempted to “poof” it, in the fear that there is some professor out there who’s unknowingly grading my blog.
Damn lazy students. As if the world isn’t going to hell already.
