Opened The Monitor this morning, the APA monthly mag, and discovered that one of my professors from the local university has a popular blog! So popular that she was rated in the top ten psych blogs this year. How fun!
But in addition to the interesting stuff, there was the same old lecturing on 'appropriate' blogging behavior. I understand the warnings out there, and how important they are, and how important it is to protect clients and refrain from putting erotic photos on a blog with my real name on it. Still, I get a little tired of being told how to behave, what not to write where, and constantly having to think about how my personal activities are or are not good for professional promotion. I suppose that's the inevitable effect of the internet, but sometimes I get frustrated with it.
That brings up thoughts about my Facebook account, too. I am working in forensics and therefore don't use my real name or 'traceable' contact info there, though by now all my school friends and profs know who I am. I know my home address can be found online all over the place as a result of years of online shopping, and a satellite map can pick out my cat sitting on my front porch. But at least that doesn't put a big red bullseye around all the people I care about the most in one fell swoop the way places like Facebook and MySpace can. Then I lament that I can't go and find all my childhood friends the way everyone else seems to be doing. I choose not to post pictures of myself either, just in case. So I miss out on a big chunk of the new culture, while worrying that I shouldn't even be partaking as much as I do.
Do other people in the psych field struggle with this too? Will we be plagued by prosecuting attorneys quoting from the blogs we thought were anonymous about our frustrations with professors, our opinions on mental health topics or the fact that we had panic attacks or episodes of depression during grad school? How will it affect my odds at tenure, should I go that route someday, that I once joked that I wanted to eat my birds for Thanksgiving dinner because they were too loud?
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
3 comments:
Not just in the psych field... worry about these things too. Will I someday not be hired as an NP because I once wrote on my blog NP's seem to listen more to patients then doctors do? Or that I've been suicidal so this makes me "unstable" forever? I think they are huge and valid concerns.
Yes, this is a very pervasive thing, isn't it? I can see how it would affect you, or any student in nearly any field, too!
I know many people who simply don't have an online presence and have no idea what it's all about. They skoff at me for being faddish and raise their eyebrows at the idea that I am missing out on anything important by abstaining. But this is much more than just a hobby, it's a culture and a lifestyle and if one chooses not to be a part of it I fear one would become marginalized, in a social sense, very quickly. How to understand my clients if I have no idea what they are talking about or what they experience? this goes much deeper than not watching the current sitcoms, it's about interactive experiences... relationships and states of being! And what about the burgeoning online medical and mental health industry? Should we bow out over fearfulness? But then how should one respond when one's boss requests to be your friend on Facebook? (has now happened to me)
Growing pains. I think that's what these are. And they will go on until we have stretched and reached our way to this new technological plateau we are heading for.
Hi Lynn,
I don't know if you remember me but I used to have a surfs up blog and we would say hey now and then but it got deleted and I was off line for awhile - but I made a new one. I wanted to invite you back if you would like to come. :)
http://katesgradblog.blogspot.com/
Hope school is going well for you!!
Post a Comment