I have a lurker from my university

Hello Lurker!

Of course, I have only myself to blame. I haven't been all that discreet. I haven't told any of my colleagues or peers or students about the blog (other than the Boyfriend and Victoria and "BP"), but I have mentioned many blogs in my classes and brought them up on screen in my high-tech classroom. (Sometimes we were goofing around before class started, but some of them had a pedagogical purpose -- like the Chaucer blog, for instance. We discussed if it was "really" in Middle English and what marked it as linguistic parody.) And my blog is on the blogrolls of some of those blogs. And that's probably how the lurker originally got there. If so, I missed that first tell-tale referral link on Site Meter, but I have since seen, over the course of a few days, a number of hits coming from the same IP address at my university and it's not my office, nor the Boyfriend's, nor Victoria's, nor BP's.

And I'm certain that whoever it is has figured out pretty quickly who "Dr. Virago" is. If you know me already it's not that hard to figure out.

So, Mr./Ms. Lurker, if you are a student, I want you to know I'll never say anything damning about you or your peers here. In fact, I'll never say anything I wouldn't say to you. You may learn more about me than I really intended (and perhaps more than you wanted to know -- like the fact that I can imitate a chimpanzee), but hey, it's still nothing I wouldn't say to adults in general. And I hope you won't hold it against me that I mix the silly and the serious, the professional and the playful. You already know I do that in the classroom, too. If it's good enough for Chaucer, it's good enough for me. :)

And if you're a Dr. Lurker, well then, I say pretty much the same to you. I'll never air department dirty laundry, should we have it. And if I have something to complain about, I'll do it in private. If you explore the blog, you'll find I use this blog in mixed ways, mostly for swapping teaching and professional advice with other professors and grad students (and being electronically social with them as well), and also for keeping in touch with far-flung friends and family. It's a small peer-group I have here at "Rust Belt U" (I hope the name doesn't offend you) and the blogosphere makes it bigger. Thus the blog is both personal and professional, for how can one ever really separate the two?

And since you're here, why don't you join the party and say hello? We're a friendly bunch.