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About Me
- Paul
- Paul Guest is the author of four volumes of poetry and a memoir. His debut, The Resurrection of the Body and the Ruin of the World, was awarded the 2002 New Issues Poetry Prize. His second collection, Notes for My Body Double, was awarded the 2006 Prairie Schooner Book Prize. His third collection, My Index of Slightly Horrifying Knowledge, was published by Ecco Press/HarperCollins in 2008. His fourth collection, Because Everything Is Terrible, was published by Diode Editions. His poems have appeared in Harper's, The Paris Review, Poetry, Tin House, The Kenyon Review, and elsewhere. His memoir, One More Theory About Happiness, was published by Ecco in May 2010 and selected for the Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers Program. The recipient of a 2011 Guggenheim Fellowship and a 2007 Whiting Writers' Award, Guest lives in Charlottesville, Virginia.
11 comments:
Eh, that's just "the Man" trying to keep bloggers down with the use of threat and fear. My favorite part was when they were like, "wow, a candidate has interests and abilities outside our own very narrow world (ie technology?) - How dare they?" I can't imagine being turned down for a tech job because I happened to blog about a poetry habit. What bastards.
PS - but seriously, Paul, a blog is as charming and inoffensive as yours can only help your job search...
I worried about this when I was actively seeking work. But I'm paranoid and I got the job. Thankfully, no one in my office knows how to read. As for this it's a publishing medium with no vetting process, no review board, and no editor, I'm not seeing the down side here...
It's a generally silly article, full of narrow thought. I mean, on the face of things, some of the concerns are valid, but only at the surface level.
And I wasn't thinking of stopping this blog. Inoffensive? Damn, I need to try harder...
Well, if you notice, it is authored by a nom de plume from a small midwestern liberal arts college -- which pretty much means two things.
1.) S/he is a coward, and we all know from anonymous posts what cowards are capable of.
2.) S/he is overcompensating for the feeling of meaninglessness in his or her own life.
Scared the daylights out of me and I HAVE a job at a small midwestern liberal arts college.
Seriously: I have great colleagues. They don't really read my blog in the same way that they don't really read all the stuff I publish unless I ask them to or they come across it somewhere. Why? My life ain't that interesting. I doubt my personal blog would have deterred them from hiring me, actually. I think they're all humanists to the core.
And I wouldn't want to teach at that other small midwestern liberal arts college. Yeesh. Yeesh.
Gina
This story freaked me out for a second. But only for a second. Why would anybody take it all so seriously? If I were interviewing somebody for a job, I'd give them credit for having a life outside their job (and outside their blog).
It depends on the type of blog and the amount of time a hiring committee may perceive it taking from the potential candidate's teaching and research responsibilities. And, it's not a matter of "having a life," it's the kind of person a blogger presents him or herself as.
Maybe it's for the same reason that these things are read and considered at least with some degree of seriousness that a colleague of mine is asking good students to write positive reviews for him on ratemyprofessor.com Yes, I perceive this to be unethical, but if someone is taking these "anonymous" posts seriously, wouldn't blogs, which are more intimate and "honest," be a good estimate for a hiring committee on the kind of stranger who is requesting of them a well-paying job and security?
What's all this talk about "jobs?"
I don't get it.
Yet another reason I'm glad I don't have aspirations to work in academia. How the hell am I supposed to be a writer/artist when I have to constantly worry about the dimwit opinions of all the Professor Dribbles out there.
This actually came up on one of my job interviews. Out of the blue, one of the interviewers asked, "How's Jake?" They had been reading up on my blog. Meh, if they want to read up on my dog walks or how much pie I ate last night, they're welcome to.
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