Well no, not really.
I was a bit surprised when I surfed by the Invisible Adjunct blog yesterday to discover that she had already posted about my blog, and then somewhat surprised again that her post about my blog generated a fair amount of discussion. You can read all about it by clicking here.
The fact that a lot of folks at Invisible Adjunct weren’t exactly willing to share in my academic happiness didn’t surprise me. For one thing, as I had said in my original post, these folks have a point. But more importantly, many people who follow the Invisible Adjunct blog are seeking a community of like-minded folks who share their complaints and laments about the academic world. Complain and lament with a group, and there is a problem with “the system;” complain and lament alone, and there is a problem with you.
No, what really surprised me is that anyone actually read my blog in the first place. I mean, I know that there are several bloggers who link to my blog (many of the people I link to link to me), and I know from my own blog surfing, it’s easy to wonder into a new blog space. This is one of the appeals of blogs to me: it reminds me of the very old days of the web, where the pleasure was just surfing about. Still, I mainly see my blog as a space to post things that are of interest to me and maybe a few others, links to sites I want to go back to later, thoughts on teaching and the academic life. Sure, it’s a public space, and I want others to read it, but it still always surprises me that anyone else actually does.