Week three of classes--already knocked down by a cold

At least I hope it's just a cold. I've been coughing a lot the last day or two, so I don't know if it's getting worse or turning the corner. Just started taking Robitussin, though that hasn't helped much yet. I had to teach via Zoom today and might need to again tomorrow. I'm not a big fan of running a large class through Zoom, but desperate times call for desperate measures. The students seem interested and involved, though, which is good. 

I'm enjoying the rhetoric class so far, though sometimes our conversation takes odd turns. Today we were talking about Lloyd Bitzer's foundational article, "The Rhetorical Situation," and a student's question ended up leading me to reflect on the "intentional fallacy" and the New Critical approach to literary criticism that I was (at least partly) educated in. I have since tended to take a more rhetorical approach to reading literature, though. (I remember when I was presenting about Vern Sneider and A Pail of Oysters on a panel about East Asia in Anglophone fiction--I looked over at the copy of my paper that one of my co-panelists had printed out and saw that she had written in the margin, "Intentional fallacy?" Was that her response to my whole paper?)

These disconnected recollections are brought to you by my cough syrup. More later...

Social media quandaries

In the week or so leading up to the beginning of the fall semester, I've cut back a lot on my use of LinkedIn, which is my only remaining active social media account after I deleted my Facebook and Twitter accounts (the latter a couple of times!) and stopped using my Bluesky account. (I'm not counting YouTube, LINE, or this account.) I deleted the LI app from my phone and logged out of LI on my computers (though admittedly, I've "checked" it once or twice since initially doing that).

This morning when I got up, I thought about whether I should just delete the LinkedIn entirely. As with all of the social media accounts I've had, I find that I have learned a lot from LI about events going on that I'm interested in, people's publications and presentations that are often relevant to my interests, information that is useful that I probably wouldn't think of searching for, etc. So when I think of deleting it, the FOMO is real. 

On the other hand, I've (mostly) gotten along OK without Facebook and Twitter and the other platforms since I left them, Admittedly, I do end up on the "public" side of FB once in a while when I'm searching for something, and when I was in Taiwan this past summer, I was talking to someone about my Ts'ai T'iech-ch'eng research and he recommended contacting a number of sources who only seem to be available through FB. (This leads to my second quandary that I've had since that conversation: should I or shouldn't I rejoin Facebook--just to contact these people or organizations? Knowing me, it seems like a slippery slope.) 

I guess for now I'll keep the LI account but just not visit it--too busy, anyway. It might end up going the way of my Bluesky account, which I think is still there if I could remember how to log into it. Or I might eventually pull the plug on it entirely, and join the un-social-mediated (or whatever you'd call it). I see the results are mixed, but from this sample, most people are positive about the change. If anyone reading this has tried disconnecting, let me know your thoughts!