The short version of the message was this:  Welcome.  Thanks for posting.  I’m really glad you’re here, and I’m sorry if I gave you the impression otherwise.

The longer version, which I’ll try to reconstruct:  We (and by this I mostly mean professors, though I’m sure the students have a similar line of conversation) talk a good bit here about the periodic sensation that we’re living in a fishbowl—that every move one makes here is immediately visible, either to one’s students or to one’s colleagues—a sensation that took me quite a long time to get used to, having moved here from the relative anonymity of the big city and the big U.  Five years on, though, I have adjusted—and you’re right, Jake, to remind me of the million small daily acts of self-censorship that have become so natural to me as to be almost invisible.

But there’s something about the web in general, and the blog in particular, that lends itself to paranoia; the technology allows for a kind of voyeurism, in that I can be seen, but I can often only see the IP footprints of those who’ve been through here.  Knowing that there are pomona.edu readers, but having no sense of who they are, just heightens that fishbowl-effect a bit.  Of course, the point of the blog is its publicness—otherwise, I could just keep these thoughts safely on my own computer—but I guess I haven’t quite adjusted (as you seem to have, Claire, and admirably, it sounds) to the idea that I’m being read by people who actually know who I am.

If my post carried a bit more tension or aggression or condescension than it ought to have, I’m really sorry for that; the tone is an aftereffect, I think, of the origins of the concerns, in the flaming of another blogging prof who suggested that she wasn’t comfortable with discussing the ethics of professor-student relationships in a public space.  I certainly don’t think of myself as your “superior,” except in the obvious ways that age, education, and position make inevitable.

The bottom line is this:  I’m glad you both posted.  I hope you’ll stick around.  I hope more students will join the conversation.  And I hope I’ll get over my nervousness about the relationship between my professor persona and my online persona—and that it won’t take me five years to do it.

More generally, do you think you censor yourself any differently here than you do in the classroom? Obviously there are things you are not likely to say to a freshman intro class that you might say to a small seminar of interested seniors, but aside from that I think there’s a certain filter that separates one’s interactions with one’s friends from interactions with colleagues and acquaintances (and students), regardless of the medium used. As far as I can tell, which is not far of course, PO is just a more focused opportunity for you to explore the issues and concepts that interest you most, both personally and academically - not a diary type blog.

That said, the interaction of “real life” and the internet always kind of creeps me out, regardless of circumstances. I wonder if that will still be true in 5 years.

I’m here, although, as my dorm Internet connection is presently about as functional as a hole in the wall, a bit late.  I’ve been reading here since I found the link from your college-hosted homepage.  I find the entries both thought-provoking and useful in a more functional sense (ie, “she says she’s been in her office, so she’s clearly not in England any more and maybe now would be a good time to drop by and grab my paper.”) I also like gaining more glimpses into what college life looks like from the other side, so to speak.  As a child of faculty, I have some idea of what it must be like as a teacher, but the unfortunate side effect of this is that I tend to project my father’s views of college onto most professors until I learn otherwise.  Hearing other perspectives helps me stop doing this.

I’m not really willing to call my online journal a weblog, since that particular term seems to imply writing for the purpose of addressing the world at large, rather than writing for one’s self that happens to be on the Internet because it’s more convenient for accessing from multiple locations that way.  I’m still faintly confused that anyone except for a few good friends would find my journal interesting enough to read.  Still, it wouldn’t change at all if I knew a professor was reading it, any more than it’s changed because I know my parents both read it or because I know random strangers read it.  It’s undeniable that its contents are quite different from anything I’d write in a private paper journal, but that’s been true from the first post.