(Note: Another post brought to you by the fine folks at Barnes and Noble. Speaking of intellectual curiosity, the Comcast people are remarkably incurious about why, despite three trips to “fix the modem”, the problem isn’t their unreliable network.)
I was going to wait until August to start posting about teacher-type stuff, but it’s come to my attention that many of my readers are trying to figure out who I am.
I can see which keywords lead people to this site, and there’s been an upswing in “who is…” searches lately. I can also tell when successful searches lead to places that confirm who I am — good for you, intrepid searchers! (And FYI, my analytics don’t tell me who you are, just what keywords are being used. So don’t worry your pretty little heads about your own privacy while you’re busy stalking me.)
Being on the job market means it’s not a good idea to create really obvious text links between my name, as employers would Google it, and a blog. On the other hand, I haven’t exactly tried to hide who I am.
Intellectual curiosity is a trait that should be rewarded. And “who is…” isn’t a bad place to start. Nor is the “About” page, which answers the questions I get most frequently.
Robert Downey Jr. can suck it, Jeremy Brett is the the only Holmes for me -- he perfectly embodies the mania to figure something out.
But, as I always told my students, good research means going beyond what is readily at hand. Digging deeper, asking for information from every possible source, sometimes getting to it in a roundabout way. People think that deductive reasoning is the key to sleuthing, but you need some basic facts before you can pull an “elementary, my dear Watson.” You also need the drive to find that information.
It helps if you’re nosy. I’m a consummate busybody and when I want to find something out — whether it’s someone’s credentials or the best sushi in the area or a bit of ancient trivia — I become obsessed with tracking it down. Determination begets devilish keyword ingenuity, the urge to gather multiple pieces of evidence, and the patience to sift through them until the light bulb goes on in my head. So I think it’s fair to say that being a buttinski can be a constructive thing when used to do good research.
(Incidentally, columnists seem constantly “shocked” to discover how much you can figure out by combining information from different social media platforms. I guess they should be grateful that most trained historians aren’t overly curious about people’s lives.)
So, for the nosy and/or curious among you I’d suggest going beyond “who is”. Try combining a few search terms. The info on the “About” page, and perhaps one more term from stuff I’ve said on other pages, should be enough to do ya. I’m almost tempted to make this a contest, only I’m not sure how I’d judge it. Also, several of my readers already know who I am and I don’t want to bore them.
Now, since it’s Friday, I’m going sign off with some of “Molly’s Blues”. I’ve had Charlie Robison stuck in my head, not unpleasantly, for several hours now:
You know I hope she won’t discover
That this all is a lie
But if I don’t get home to see her
My heart will surely die.
I will see you in the morning
When the moonlight leaves the trees
But I will always feel the embers
Of the flames of Tennessee.
My Doktormutter once said, after I had given her a report on my summer research, that one of the pleasures of being a historian was reading other people’s mail, and getting paid to do it.
Of course we’re early modernists, so our subjects have been dead for centuries. If we were doing it for the Stasi we might not have such moral equanimity.
BTW we’ll be back in the Happy Valley in just over four weeks. We’ll have to have you and Dr* $hiraz over for a BBQ before things get too hairy.
*As I am currently in England I omitted the period after the abbreviation.
Despite being in England, you’re American enough to call it a period and not a full stop though, eh?
Yes, the subjects being dead does make the whole “nosy” thing a lot more comfortable. Doing thorough research on a living person could just as easily be called stalking…
I’m sure Dr. $hiraz and I would be delighted to attend a BBQ!
It’d be great if you could write about what teachers can do to promote this sort of noseyness!
I had an interesting debate with another teacher about this. Being a pessimist, I don’t think you can teach curiosity, and I think there are people who just aren’t curious at all. Others disagree, but I say you just do your best to be enthusiastic about the material and accept that you’re not going to “save” every student.