Some personal reflections on blogging here

Twenty years and a few months ago Chris asked me to join a group of bloggers who were going to create a group blog so as to reduce the pressure on each to post frequently and combine audiences.

First I asked him what a blog was.

After he explained I told him that I, a technophobe, would be too incompetent to post. Eventually I agreed to do it on condition there were no expectations that I do anything. Chris, wisely I guess, calculated that even so I would come to feel some obligation to contribute and might end up enjoying it. Which I have. Whereas all the original bloggers were motivated and had audiences I am aware that without CT I’d never have written anything like most of what I’ve written here (or gotten the side gig I did at the TES for a few years), and that even if I had, nobody would have noticed. So I’m especially grateful to CB for convincing me, and to the original members and early joiners, none of whom would have known anything about me, for trusting him about me. I’m very aware of the asymmetry between how much their writing has drawn an audience to mine and how much mine has drawn an audience to theirs.

Very early on I found it peculiar and rather delightful to communicate with people I didn’t know, in a way that journalism, then, didn’t allow for. I’ve learned so much from the other CTers, but also from our commenters, both named and pseudonymous. (Who is oldster? Would I know them if I bumped into them?). Sometimes people have said kind things about posts that have really moved me (long ago Tim Worstall linked to the original version of one of the hits Chris compiled, and I still remember what he said when I feel a bit low). And there are people I have gotten to know well over the years without ever really interacting in person – I’ve met Russell Arben Fox once, Laura at 11D twice, and Chris Brooke never (though I did see him in Broad Street at a distance once, but he’d turned a corner before I was able to catch him). And I’ve still never met most of the CT collective, even the originals (eg Daniel and Maria, both of whom are, in quite different ways, stunning writers and whose every post has made me think how absurdly lucky I am to share a platform with them).

One time I introduced myself to a candidate after a job talk here at Madison, and he said “oh it’s so good to meet you: I’ve read been reading your work on crooked timber for years” and then I saw the look of horror on his face as he thought he’d made a mistake and added, awkwardly, “And, of course, I’ve been reading your philosophical work too”. I hope my laugh reassured him. Anyway, he got the job (I had no say over it, it not being in my department, but it was a great hire).

The thing I’ve learned the most about is teaching. This has been where I’ve worked out my ideas about how to teach better, crowdsourcing ideas about how to tweak and change my practice, and trying to share ideas and practices. It’s very common that I’m invited to give a talk somewhere and asked to attend classes and give advice when I’m there, and sometimes am asked to do workshops on teaching. That’s all thanks to CT. This essay (which is probably the most widely read of anything I’ve published in an academic journal — certainly prompted numerous emails from people when it was published) is based on a series of posts here.

But the single most influential thing was a comment by a pseudonymous commenter on a post I wrote very early on, in praise of lecturing. The commenter simply said, snarkily, “if you learn so much preparing lectures why don’t you get your students to do it?” I wasn’t embarrassed, though I should have been, but it haunted me for a couple of years and kept coming back to me when, around 2007, I started finally taking actual teaching and learning — my job, that is, really seriously. I no longer lecture in my smaller classes, and even in my large lecture classes I now probably spend less than half the time actually talking. My students learn much more than they used to. That commenter bears a lot of responsibility for that, but probably never read another word I wrote!