University Diaries » A Sunday in August

I lived here, at the beach, all winter, writing on my blog last October, November, and December about the empty beach and the cold water.

Mornings, a few runners in black sweats appeared on the sand, their backdrop huge container ships and contrails.

Afternoons, I scoped out beachstones with calcite lines around them for my collection, now piled in a glass bowl near the piano in Garrett Park. Nights, I trained my binoculars on big orange moons off the balcony.

The quiet was absolute. Somewhere in it, intermittently, I became aware of the tides. Aware of the way I wasn’t aware of them, and of how they calmed me.

*******************************

Everyone’s here now, and it’s hot. The smoothed winter sand that made the beach look, from above, like an almond cookie, is pocked with shoveled wells and wetted sculptures. The wind ruffles not only the dune grass, but flags on lifeguard stands and the edges of blue umbrellas.

From our second-floor balcony, we hear constant little inrushes of speech on the boardwalk.

I’m forty-two. I’m done dating. I

Did he smoke on the beach? I told

He’s not my blood cousin. We can

Everyone’s here, but there’s still the same propofolic effect — calm, just this side of sleep.

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Dr. Bernard Carroll, known as the "conscience of psychiatry," contributed to various blogs, including Margaret Soltan's University Diaries, for which he sometimes wrote limericks under the name Adam.
New York Times

George Washington University English professor Margaret Soltan writes a blog called University Diaries, in which she decries the Twilight Zone-ish state our holy land’s institutes of higher ed find themselves in these days.
The Electron Pencil

It’s [UD's] intellectual honesty that makes her blog required reading.
Professor Mondo

There's always something delightful and thought intriguing to be found at Margaret Soltan's no-holds-barred, firebrand tinged blog about university life.
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You can get your RDA of academic liars, cheats, and greedy frauds at University Diaries. All disciplines, plus athletics.
truffula, commenting at Historiann

Margaret Soltan at University Diaries blogs superbly and tirelessly about [university sports] corruption.
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University Diaries. Hosted by Margaret Soltan, professor of English at George Washington University. Boy is she pissed — mostly about athletics and funding, the usual scandals — but also about distance learning and diploma mills. She likes poems too. And she sings.
Dissent: The Blog

[UD belittles] Mrs. Palin's degree in communications from the University of Idaho...
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Professor Margaret Soltan, blogging at University Diaries... provide[s] an important voice that challenges the status quo.
Lee Skallerup Bessette, Inside Higher Education

[University Diaries offers] the kind of attention to detail in the use of language that makes reading worthwhile.
Sean Dorrance Kelly, Harvard University

Margaret Soltan's ire is a national treasure.
Roland Greene, Stanford University

The irrepressibly to-the-point Margaret Soltan...
Carlat Psychiatry Blog

Margaret Soltan, whose blog lords it over the rest of ours like a benevolent tyrant...
Perplexed with Narrow Passages

Margaret Soltan is no fan of college sports and her diatribes on the subject can be condescending and annoying. But she makes a good point here...
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From Margaret Soltan's excellent coverage of the Bernard Madoff scandal comes this tip...
Money Law

University Diaries offers a long-running, focused, and extremely effective critique of the university as we know it.
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The inimitable Margaret Soltan is, as usual, worth reading. ...
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I awake this morning to find that the excellent Margaret Soltan has linked here and thereby singlehandedly given [this blog] its heaviest traffic...
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As Margaret Soltan, one of the best academic bloggers, points out, pressure is mounting ...
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Many of us bloggers worry that we don’t post enough to keep people’s interest: Margaret Soltan posts every day, and I more or less thought she was the gold standard.
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University Diaries by Margaret Soltan is one of the best windows onto US university life that I know.
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