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UD is...
"Salty." (Scott McLemee)
"Unvarnished." (Phi Beta Cons)
"Splendidly splenetic." (Culture Industry)
"Except for University Diaries, most academic blogs are tedious."
(Rate Your Students)
"I think of Soltan as the Maureen Dowd of the blogosphere,
except that Maureen Dowd is kind of a wrecking ball of a writer,
and Soltan isn't. For the life of me, I can't figure out her
politics, but she's pretty fabulous, so who gives a damn?"
(Tenured Radical)

Friday, October 19, 2007

UD Instablogs the First...

...of two midterms she's giving today.

She has a tradition of doing this on University Diaries, describing what it's like to stand up in front of a room of students (she's standing up because you can't sit down and use the computer) who race through the eight questions you've given them to choose among, and who then settle in to ye olde five-paragraph essay... UD's a fan of the five-paragraph essay. She's praised it in the past on this blog, but is too lazy to find the link.

A reporter from GW's student newspaper, The Hatchet, interviewed UD in her office yesterday about her blog. They're doing an article -- they do one every year -- about GW professors who blog. The reporter was a slim, genial guy who tapped out UD's answers on an elegant laptop he balanced on his knees. He seemed impressed by her daily hit number.

On the Metro this morning, UD apologized to the perky blond woman sitting next to her for spilling things here and there as she sloppily carried her books and papers... In this respect, this sloppiness, UD conforms, I guess, to professor typecasting...

The woman said "No problem! Don't worry! I'm a little disorganized myself today. I just got in from Phoenix - I'm visiting my daughter at George Washington University - and I stayed with my cousin in Baltimore last night. I was so tired when I got to her office from the airport that I slept under her desk! ... Do I get off at Dupont Circle? Do you know?"

"I'm going there. Just do what I'm doing. You want to transfer to the Blue line and get off at Foggy Bottom."

"Are you a student?" [No, no. She didn't say this.]

She looked at my books and papers. "Do you teach there?"

"Yup."

And we were off and running. Our last topic of conversation, before we waved goodbye as she went to the AddFare machine, was the sadness of having raised children so independent-minded that they won't even occasionally cling to us, or ask our advice about things. Her son's in Moscow learning the language and working; her daughter at GW studies International Relations and wants to be a diplomat.

So far a student has come up to me and asked how to spell rhythmic. Another approached and said: "It's a silly question, but some professors are picky... Can we use both sides of the page in the blue book?" Honey, UD is so not picky...