I have several friends who read this blog but I never thought one of them would tell faculty about it. I thought it was understood that because I wrote under a pseudonym that people would respect my desire to remain anonymous. I know that the alternative is that they had no idea I wanted to remain pseudoanonymous.
I can't tell you how freaked out I am right now.
"Outing a blogger" seems a common occurence in the bloggosphere - a month ago (?) another blogger was outed and she was forced to close her blog. After that I remember many bloggers informing their readers that they would be going through their archives, deleting anything that was incriminating.
There seems something in our psyche (perhaps Jerry Springer) that inspires us to uncover and reveal other people's secrets. A while back, Dr. Isis was attending a conference and from her blog it sounded like many people tried to find out who she really was. This happened again during her Letters to Our Daughters Project.
Although I have only written disparaging remarks about two faculty at LUC (and really just one because I've told Aspergers what I think of him), I am still concerned that my colleagues, my supervisor General Solution Guru (from whom I need letters of reference), and potential employers in the field of biology will read this.
So now I ask myself the question - why am I writing this and why the fuck did I tell anyone about it?
The truth is I write this blog because it helps me sort out my thoughts on my career choices, scientific philosophy, and it is a place where I can be honest about my emotional state.
And I thought the reason I had told a few of my friends was because I wanted to keep them up to date on how I was doing. But frankly, if that were really the case a group email would have sufficed. Be honest Girlpostdoc - come on - what was the real reason. Okay, perhaps I was hoping more people would read the blog and in reading this blog found it interesting, I would feel like I had accomplished something. Oh, the irony of "fame."
Well, so now I am left with a few choices:
1. Continue as if nothing happened.If you have encountered this problem, what did you do? Or if you just want to weigh in, I could use a little input.
2. Continue but never write anything about others on the blog again.
3. Shut down the blog.
4. Shut down the blog, but start up another telling noone.
5. Make the blog accessible to only a few people.
16 comments:
A colleague knows about my blog. Actually a colleague or two does. I haven't stopped the blog, but I have stopped writing about lab interactions.....
1 or 2. I don't think that having someone else know about it warrants closing down the blog. I also think that blogging is becoming so mainstream these days that if I were hiring someone, I would not be willing to make assumptions that they weren't maintaining a pseudonymous blog.
Shutting down your blog seems like a drastic measure, especially if you enjoy coming here to vent about the frustrations and curve-balls life and the lab throw at you.
That being said, knowing that people know who you are and are reading your blog must be worrisome. I think that option #2 would be your best bet, in this case.
I found out that a direct coworker was randomly forwarded my blog. (bad luck i guess) At first it kind of creeped me out and I didn't write for a bit. But since I don't bitch about coworkers or anything, there was nothing incriminating on there per se.
It sometimes still weirds me out, but I write anyway. I just try not to think about it too much.
I would be sad if you stopped blogging.
Dang. I don't think you should stop! I can read through your writing that you are both enjoying this experience and getting something out of it, and you deserve to have that continue (and I also enjoy reading it!). So I am solidly in the 1 or 2 camp.
I am one of the ones you sent the link to on purpose. Just started reading recently and of course I love what you write. But I would shut down or make it only assessible to a few people. Some bloggers also just password protect certain posts. Keeping everything up as it is simply isn't worth the professional risk.
-the pregnant isa
Keep up with the blog, just don't say anything you wouldn't say to a colleague's face. This has limited some of my ranting, but because my veil of pseudonymity is very thin I have found it to be necessary.
The good thing to come out of this is that, rather than rant, I find I use the blog to think of solutions to problems, to look forward rather than be angry about things that have happened. It's forced me into a more positive mindset. I also use the blog as a way to think about the service component of my job. Yes it's pseudonymous, but if my name was associated with it would I be proud? Would I be furthering feminism, academic science, etc? If I can answer yes to at least 50% of the posts I'm happy.
I have no idea how hard it is to shut down and start up a blog but that seems the obvious choice to me. Many people have more than one blog, so you could keep this one going but vent and confess in the new non one without worry.
sorry an extra word jumped in there:(
...personally...I'm waiting for part 2 of slow science gets the shaft.
Hoping you don't completely disappear.
I chose Option 4 after I lost my anonymity. And now I maintain I write under the assumption of pseudo-anonymity.
My old blog is sealed and I got a lot of WTF dude! Why did you go private? Can I get in, requests, before I decided to start a new one. Same style as the old, with the same disclaimers, but much less...fully open, I guess.
My policy has always been to try to avoid almost completely writing about any particular real-life individuals in a way that would allow them to recognize themselves if they were to stumble upon my blog.
I don't think you've said much that would get you in trouble, although I guess you never can tell what will piss people off (see: comments section on my blog for examples).
I do a lot of self-censoring, especially more over time as I've gotten angry feedback that makes me think people would disown me in real life if they knew what I wrote.
I also do a lot of self-censoring in real life, to try to avoid outing myself. Maybe this is paranoid and I don't know how well it's working, but I think it's better this way... while I think some of my coworkers may suspect, my goal is to keep them doubting their own suspicions. A few close friends know I have a blog, but I have never sent them the link.
To some extent, this is what my post this week was about, too. Whether it's worth writing so publicly if you're always worried about getting caught or potential backlash, etc.
It's funny how in some ways blogging is so therapeutic, and in others, so stressful.
Personally, I enjoy your blog and I think you've written some posts of wide interest and good insight that should stay up.
However, I generally avoid writing about students/technicians, and the blogs that write about characters using fake names tends to generate more drama and risk, from what I can tell. (DGT came back, btw, if that's who you were thinking of? Or was there someone else?). So I would suggest maybe avoiding that particular practice, since I think it leads to writing about riskier topics in riskier ways.
Please don't go!
I would hate to see this blog shut down, but I would hate it even more to see you censoring yourself. I think your blog draws upon your personal experiences in academics as a woman (and a minority) to discuss broader issues that many academics (scientists or otherwise) face. As a fellow woman in science, it would be a loss if you gave up or censored your blog. So I guess I would support restarting under a different name might be the option I most support. But I support whatever you decide!
It's a terrible situation. I guess you could pull entries that you don't want anyone at that U to read.
Or start another, surreptitiously link to your friends.
I've connected to people who have outed me (at first I had my name on the blog) and asked them to delete references. I guess you could also confront her. Probably should anyway.
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