Given the sheer paucity of women online in those days, the fakery bought me a speedy entrance into a lot of places where I might otherwise have gotten nowhere. And I played it to the hilt: I got a telephone listing for my alter ego and had a female friend record an answering-machine message for me. The subterfuge lasted about a year and a half, though I kept the persona going for another year or so, just because it was so popular. The weirdest aspect had to be when I set up a competing male persona and had the two of them squabbling with each other on the same threads. (“She” definitely didn’t think much of me, a situation which eventually helped drive me into therapy.)

Okay, kidding, but you get the idea. And the very language defaults to male, pronoun-wise: I expect that rigid agreement in grammatical number will vanish as a result. “Everyone will bring their own lunch” is technically bad English, but the proper “his own lunch” is not exactly inclusive, and “his or her” becomes cumbersome after a while.

As one of the guys online who used to be a girl (this was more than twenty years ago, before it became a fad), I know something about how this process works, though obviously real-life experience is another matter entirely.

I find myself working very hard for this instructor. He’s free with the praise, something I’ve never had before, and it gives me a lot of confidence in my new-found abilities. That praise is fast, too. The longest I’ve had to wait for a grade on a paper is 36 hours – sometimes he responds in less that 12. I feel valued in this class, like I really have something to contribute. I wish I could take more classes from him.

My final paper will be more analytical, something I’m looking forward to.

My students, on the other hand, have written five short primary source analysis papers, and still most of them couldn’t find a bleeping thesis statement with both hands and a flashlight…..

Assignment was to comment on what we agree or disagree with, and how we feel about it in light of our own experience and previous reading. Pretty simple stuff. This instructor is great, though. He writes back and explains the things we report that we didn’t understand, and comments on our interpretations and suggests further readings. I’m really enjoying working with him.

Is there something to this assignment other than “react”?