FUCKE, as he would say. I just left a comment on another blog while signed in to my university e-mail account, and said comment inadvertently made it clear who the author of this blog is. FUCKE.
It doesn’t matter since my ex chair, my ex dean, my ex man and various other people know my “blogge” (as Comrade Physioproffe would call it) and there has even been a minor court case about it, so a judge and a lawyer know about it.
Still, I have not made this error before. It seems best not to contact the author and alert hir to delete comments or change the published name of the author, as that would only draw attention to a problem of which I am aware, but which others may not notice.
It seems best not to mention the matter here, either. But FUCKE.
Axé.
coldhearted scientist وداد 
I think it has already been done. Check the blog in question.
You did that once on my former blog, but I just never approved the comment. It’s really hard to keep all these identities straight.
Servetus! Hi! And actually, I remember that! How are you? Are you anywhere near Central Time and do you ever get down this way?
Spanish Prof! Gracias! I went over there to check out the situation and proceeded to commit the same error! It’s practically hopeless … I am really not sure it’s necessary any more to keep identities separate … I just don’t want the “blogge” to start feeling like work … it’s my after hours joint, my art project!
How many browsers do you use? I use Firefox for my personal email, blog commenting, etc., and Chrome for work. It happens those two personae have the same name, but I don’t want to confuse them. The same thing could work for you — and if you have more identities than two, you can turn to Opera and then Safari bzw. IE before running out of decent current-standard browsers.
That is one heck of a good idea and I cannot believe I hadn’t thought of it. Thank you! This would solve all sorts of other plain old practical problems, like wanting to be logged in to the Z accounts and at the same time to the separate WordPress account I have for class blogs. I will start immediately. Reiteradas gracias.
You still probably want to go back to that more recent post and delete your new indiscreet comments….;-)
I am now in the Eastern Time Zone. Still, unfortunately, a professor. But now perhaps less attached to protecting my anonymity than before. I still hope we’ll be able to meet some day.
Hi, Servetus! I’ve missed you. I’m sorry you’re still unhappily a professor, but I wish you well. Given the context of this thread, I should say that I don’t know who you are, but I enjoyed your online persona when you were blogging openly.
Aaaw, thanks, Dame Eleanor Hull — that means a lot to me! I felt that that Servetus was sour and basically unlikable, so I’m grateful to read this. I lurk very aggressively on your blog — definitely still reading. 🙂
Oh, wow! I’m glad I’m still interesting. 🙂 Um, if I liked your sour and unlikeable persona, what does that make me? Maybe you shouldn’t answer that.
Sour and unlikable? I didn’t see that.
(But then I don’t think I’m crabby, yet Dead Voles says I am, so who knows. ;-))
Dame E: Sweet and likable 🙂
Z: I went back and read those posts yesterday. I reminded myself of a wounded animal. Glad to be in a different emotional space now.
So do you think it’s possible to be happy as a professor, S? Or are we just too guilt ridden (or something) to enjoy it?
Vance, I’d been trying for that all day and had tried on the earlier occasions, too, but that blog didn’t appear to have comments set up to allow this from the user’s side. So I went to comment again, to point that out, and oddly, precisely while I was previewing my comment, the little garbage can icons appeared that let you delete comments! !!!
As whats-their-name points out there, it’s probably that you weren’t logged in as the right (wrong) person to be able to delete “your own” comments. If you do manage to adopt different browsers for different personae, that difficulty should vanish with the rest.
On the other hand, software (and I speak as an engineer, indeed an employee of the organization that hosts that blog) can be flaky.
My personal life got really complicated that last year at that institution. My alternative plan to professoring got fouled up at the last second, mostly because I hadn’t formulated it very clearly and didn’t have a strong alternative in place. I held out until the very last second, then succumbed to a temporary job as an alternative to being unemployed. So I guess this year is a test of whether I could be a happy professor, elsewhere, i.e., by changing one of the variables. So far this place seems a lot happier but I am skeptical as I tend to think I am the problem, not the career. Lots of other people seem to be happy in it. Just not me.
@ Vance, aha, I get it! Hilarious that you work for that company. I’m posting
in Chromium right now, with my RL identity in Firefox on the other half of the screen. It’s great. Thanks for the idea.
@ Servetus, I would maybe recommend this consultant, Karen Kelsky (blog The Professor Is In) on the formulation of exit plans. According to her site she is very big on having a STRONG plan in place. Speaking as someone who has tried to leave, I know the value of that.
Re happiness — it’s hard to tell. For me it’s not being in academia per se that matters, or being in a particular field. I want a research job on something having to do with culture in a focused, high energy, positive atmosphere, and I want an urban life.
In graduate school, I thought my ideal job would be doing something at UNESCO (which, of course, is in Paris). I don’t think I was wrong.
@Servetus, re comment from way up thread, do I seem like a wounded animal, then? Because I feel like one!!! It’s what the blog is about!!!
You actually started me blogging, and what I admired was the short declarative sentences, the willingness to take no s***. So no, you don’t seem like that to me and didn’t at the time.
C’est fascinant. That’s what I started the blog for: to express myself clearly and directly, without equivocation or overuse of the word “although.” Good, great re the willingness to take no s***, because the blog was started so I could practice being that way IRL. (That’s why it’s pseudonymous — I really wanted to redevelop myself!)
And did it work? I have the same problem (“notwithstanding” is my word).
It has not solved my unhappy job situation — and it isn’t academia per se, my problem, it’s academia as served to me — but it was resoundingly successful in that it got me out of my abusive relationship. I started it so I could have a place to speak unmonitored by the other person, and talk to people without using all the circumlocution and and other forms of care that I was having to take in real life. It got me strong enough and clear enough to leave, and I am not sure I could have done it otherwise.
Yeah, the unmonitored conversation was important for me, too. It was illusory in that there were still many things I could not say. But it was unmonitored by the people who were the problem before.
There’s something about speaking that makes it easier to continue speaking.
It’s funny, you and Didion and most people I know IRL who have worked at your former place, had a really rough time. But it feels so much more relaxed over there, to me, than it does here. I wonder…
I can’t compare to your “here,” of course. They are very different institutions. But there’s very much a rhetoric of pleasantness at my former place. We were told all the time how lucky we were to work in such a friendly, supportive place. It *was* friendly to some people, and if you didn’t look at it too closely, and if you didn’t ask assistant professors.
It is famous for being assistant professor hell. I’d be curious to have the experience and see how it compared. I’d give up tenure to try it, just for the sake of experimentation. And my first job, that I hated, also kept saying how friendly and supportive it was, which I found very weird considering that if you did what they wanted, you wouldn’t be employable elsewhere … very Machiavellian, I thought at the time.