Does anyone else ever have those crawl-under-a-table-and-panic kinds of moments, or am I the only one? I don't have them very often, but they do seem sort of inevitable. Like getting the flu.
What never fails for me is finding yet another book review out there. I think book reviews must be the gods' punishment for being so brash as to even write a book (but I only did it for tenure! I swear it!). I knew when I published my first book that it would be hard for me to take the evaluations; the way I managed to convince myself to do it anyway was by promising myself that I just wouldn't look at the reviews.
But that was before the era of the internet journal. It seems as if every blasted academic journal is now online. Which means all my reviews are, too, and every time someone calls up my name on Google--which they do, because I can see them on my statcounter--up come all the reviews, too. Talk about public humiliation. It doesn't matter if the review is positive, either--it's the public scrutiny of something that seems so private that makes me writhe.
I wonder if any other profession has as much public judgment out there? Most people never have to endure the kind of public scrutiny that professors get. Celebrities do, of course. But they sort of ask for it. Professors are hardly celebrities. They're mostly shy sorts who really don't get along very well in social situations. Yet there it all is, all those gossipy comments, all protected in the name of "free speech": the appraisals by students, the judgments from critics, you name it. Every aspect of a professor's person is considered fair game.
I think that's one reason I started blogging...it's kind of like at least having a say in what everyone is already saying about you?
Thursday, December 15, 2005
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