Comments on Reassigned Time: Compliments That Catch One off Guard and the Value...

You know that writing about something forces you t...

2008-12-24T17:36:00.000-05:00

You know that writing about something forces you to think about it critically. After all, that is what you are teaching your students, right? So it should not be a surprise that blogging helps in this area. Anonymous give and take allows you to try out new ideas and forces you to refine and defend them. There is great value in that.

blogging has helped me figure a lot of things out,...

2008-12-15T09:17:00.000-05:00

blogging has helped me figure a lot of things out, too. I don't know how I'll do with department politics, on the other hand, because I don't shut up and I don't exactly know how savvy I'm going to be. or, really, the bigger problem is that I don't shut up and I'm confident in saying what I want to say but I assume that I've made enemies and I behave accordingly. I discover later that the poeple I thought hated me don't actually hate me at all. In fact, I think I really only have two enemies in my department--one professor and one grad student.

anyway, my point is this is something I worry about in my professional future. Blogging has helped to this point, so I have hope it will continue to be useful and maybe I won't do as poorly as I think I will.

I totally agree here, Dr.C. I started blogging ju...

2008-12-15T08:53:00.000-05:00

I totally agree here, Dr.C. I started blogging just as I was defending my diss about 5 years ago, and have been able to process many of those tricky situations, and even broader career trajectories in a space where feedback came in ways that were less consequential.

And I think there's a "both" quality to your chicken/egg question here, since We both seem to be the kinds of people who do well to process things out loud before acting. And since I too could never keep my mouth shut and my head down, I've found that the very professional habits of mind that blogging has encouraged means that I've eaten my words less often.

So the impulse to blog is itself potential evidence of "savvy" even as the blogging polishes that set of skills.

And not for nothing, whenever grad students start asking about how to figure out stuff about the profession, I always tell them to read academic blogs, and send them here, among other places, to start their reading.

I think a big part of your success, Dr. Crazy, mus...

2008-12-15T00:57:00.000-05:00

I think a big part of your success, Dr. Crazy, must be that your analytical skills are out of this world. I mean, sure, most academics are very good at breaking things/ideas down into smaller parts, but you are able to identify and explain the various parts of situations and ideas (be they political or pedagogical) in amazingly clear and comprehensive detail. Also, it seems as if you can do this analysis fairly quickly and eloquently. If not, you could not blog/write as much as you do as well as you do. These analytical and expressive skills, I'm sure, serve you very well in both political and the pedagogical contexts.

I can say that your analytical skills have definitely helped me to think more effectively about the work I do, especially in the classroom.

I love this post. I especially love the distincti...

2008-12-14T20:04:00.000-05:00

I love this post. I especially love the distinction you make between speaking up and making enemies -- not necessarily the same thing! I loathe the advice that you should keep your head down as a junior faculty member, and I very much believe that you can engage in your department/university without making enemies and without seeming like a tool.