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Showing posts with the label blogging

Why Bother? the final #blogarch question. Now with added answers!

Ok! Got distracted by other academic commitments, so fell off the #blogarch wagon for a bit, but back on for March and Doug's final question :   where are you/we going with blogging or would you it like to go?  "Where do we go from here? Is it down to the lake I fear.   Ay ay ay ay ay ay..."   - Haircut 100, sometime in the 80s.   Or, as several of my colleagues would put it, why am I wasting my time writing non-peer reviewed anything? Why would I share anything about my work when people could find out and use it themselves, without giving me credit? I've encountered time and again the repetitive mantra that blogging is at best a waste of time, and at worst an ego-stroking, publicity-seeking exercise carried out by those who just can't hack 'real' academic research. Owwww. This does rather beg the question - why bother? Well, one answer is, I increasingly don't. My personal blog languishes as research projects that really ca

ah, but what have you done for me lately? a response to the #saa14 #blogarch carnival

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...in which your correspondent participates, not for the first time (those were the good ole' days, eh Colleen ?) , in the digital round robin that is a blogging carnival, with the hopes of someday seeing it at the SAAs . Follow along with the carnival through the #blogarch tag or Doug's blog here . November's question: Why blogging? – Why did you, or if it was a group- the group, start a blog? I'm guessing that like many of my blogging compatriots, I started my personal blog for a combination of reasons, starting with interest in a new bright and shiny thing (blogging! whatever next-- hoverboards? Hey, it was a different time), and running the gamut of self-publicising social media instincts, including the desire to join a conversation of peers, the chance to talk loosely and informally about things I was interested in, and the chance to share my devastating wit with the world at large.*  The world is a lonely place at the end of a PhD or in the dreaded gap bet