i'm not an academic but i play one in the blogosphere
I was talking to
Mel the other day (on the actual phone! no typing!) and we laughed at how I've managed to get myself on the blogrolls of a bunch of academic folks. Of course, she lists me appropriately at the bottom of her blogroll, despite the fact we've known each other for ages. Harumph. :) Heck, George Williams even included me in a
post about new academic blogs. I protested, not because I don't want to be in the club, but because I feel I'm terribly unqualified. I said, in a comment on his site, "I am just a geek who blogs, and I happen to go to school. The folks [on his list of new blogs] are true academics, who muse on scholarly things. I'm only a random person with a computer who happens to use words like 'lest' and struggles with reading
Middlemarch." All of that true, except I'm no longer struggling with
Middlemarch (I like it, but just a little; it's still a terribly long book that makes me sleepy). But I'm still in his blogroll and I read his blog every day...and those of many academic bloggers. In fact, my blogroll is 35% academic. Who knew? I just like you people more than others.
It's not that I'm posing as an academic—I hope no one thinks I am. Of all the professions in all the land, academics would have been my chosen field if a) I had better prepared myself as an undergrad and b) didn't get myself into lots of debt as a youngster. It's more the former than the latter; when I went to grad school the first time around, a billion years ago and for about six weeks, I was completely unprepared, academically. (Note: in reading academic blogs, hearing about current students and hearing stories by now-academics of things they did when they were in grad school, I think that my feelings of being unprepared were self-made and in fact I would have done fine. But I didn't think that that at the time!) It's neither here nor there; I went off and did something else. But I've always had a great respect for educators, and in general it's these types of folks that I'd much prefer to spend time with...and that includes blog-reading.
Links remotely related to my profession, such that it is and such that I pretty much despise, only account for 10% of the links here. If you didn't know me, you'd probably never know that I work in web app and db design and development. I was going to add the clause "because I don't exude geekiness" but then I remembered that I tend to jump into the commenting fray when it comes to template issues and geeky jargon, and I do so love Google...so I think maybe I do exude a little geekiness. That's ok.
But seriously...I just wanted to clear up any misconceptions for the five of you who read this: I'm not an academic, but if you still want to hang out and chat, that's cool!
