At afternoon tea the other day I had just finished telling a fellow grad student a funny story about something one of my ex-students said. In the lull in the conversation that followed, and in front of almost the entire staff of the department, she replied, "That's hilarious! If you had a blog, you could post about stuff like that. I'm sure it would be popular."
Pop quiz:
The correct reply would have been:
A. Yeah, but I'd never blog about students or staff. That would be wrong.
B. What's a blog?
C. Um. Yeah... If I had a blog. Yeah. A blog. [Gives her a suspicious look.] What do you mean? Because I don't. Have a blog. No. And if I did, I wouldn't be telling people about it at afternoon tea.
For extra credit:
Guess which one was my actual answer. Could I possibly have acted more suspiciously if I had tried?
Saturday, November 18, 2006
I'd make a really bad undercover agent
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8 Comments:
I've decided if this happens to me, i'm pulling b) "What's a blog?"
I figure, if I can look really blog dumb enough then no one will think I'm capable of having one...
Yeah, I think that would have been smart. Sigh.
I'd have said (b) as well...so you said (a) then?
Actually, I'd deflect by saying 'academic blogging seems very popular these days'. Then speak generally.
No. I think (a) would have been an okay choice. But I went with (c), including the whole 'protest too much' and suspicious facial expression thing.
"And I certainly wouldn't blog pseudonymously. Nope. Sure wouldn't. And I especially wouldn't adopt such a pseudonym as 'Styleygeek.' And, should I have such a thing as a 'blog,' I certainly wouldn't write about this story on it."
I'm terrible at keeping this at all a secret. The problem is that most of what I know about other disciplines I've learned from academic blogging. Why must this stuff be so interesting and relevant? (Mr. QWP is even worse. He has a habit of referring to my blog or telling people stories about people I know from the blogosphere, around old people, who have no idea what a blog is, and who have a vague idea that I'm going to have my identity stolen because I'm 'on the internet.'")
I digress.
(By "this" in the beginning of the second paragraph, I mean "my blog." Not "your blog".)
Like psycgirl, I've decided to say b) "What's a blog?" if anyone ever asks me. I don't know whether anyone will believe me, though.
I'd go with (a). However, I would have that suspicious look on my face, as in choice (c) as I was sayiing it.
Talk to me! (You know you want to!)