Several off the cuff reasons: contemporary academics need to be networked academics, in all senses of the word; blogs allow you to establish a research identity in the public sphere; blogs allow you to establish and participate within appropriate communities of practice; blogs allow you to document your research as a process; blogs provide an avenue for publication.
At the same time on Wednesday we had a meeting of the mostly untenured faculty in the school, in which we were told anything we put up on the web is simply a waste of time and likely to work against our tenure.
Now, the thing is, I know that it’s good for grad students to do this. I know that you need to network with other scholars and share ideas and do all the kinds of things that blogs end up being great for. I love what some of my new grad students this year are doing in their blogs, and I know that it will be good for their careers.
But I also know that the senior faculty are right. You don’t get tenure without funded research, and blogging is a waste of time.
Of course, once you get tenure, you can go back to acting like a grad student: still working hard as hell, but for the love of the work. Why can’t pre-tenure profs act like grad students and tenured faculty? Why is this process so… backward?
Tenuring bloggers
Sebastian Fiedler (re)posts on why grad students should blog, quoting Adrian Miles, who writes that they should for…
At the same time on Wednesday we had a meeting of the mostly untenured faculty in the school, in which we were told anything we put up on the web is simply a waste of time and likely to work against our tenure.
Now, the thing is, I know that it’s good for grad students to do this. I know that you need to network with other scholars and share ideas and do all the kinds of things that blogs end up being great for. I love what some of my new grad students this year are doing in their blogs, and I know that it will be good for their careers.
But I also know that the senior faculty are right. You don’t get tenure without funded research, and blogging is a waste of time.
Of course, once you get tenure, you can go back to acting like a grad student: still working hard as hell, but for the love of the work. Why can’t pre-tenure profs act like grad students and tenured faculty? Why is this process so… backward?
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