Facebook

First, I started this blog. Then, I got Google Reader (which is wonderful) so that I could read everyone else's blogs as soon they were updated. And, now, I've really taken my procrastination and frittering away of valuable work time to a whole new level. Yes, I signed up for Facebook. I don't even know what possessed me. I did it last Sunday night, after midnight!, when I had just gotten off the plane and home from SAA. It must have been the combination of the fact that it was late enough to go to bed but I was still on California time and therefore didn't feel tired. That first night when I signed up, I ended up surfing the site until 4:30am! I don't even want to think about adding up all the hours I spent on the site last week. Since this weekend, I've been doing much better. The novelty has worn off. I only check it once or twice or day, or when an email alert arrives. I can now go a whole 24 hours straight without checking it in fact. But this site is very, very addictive. Who would have thought that it would be so interesting to catch up with people that I've lost touch with since my undergrad or my MA degrees, or even with people for whom it's only been a few years, like all the MAs who were in my PhD classes a few years back. It is though. And it's amazing to see how spread out all over the world these people are. They are all across Canada, the US, and the UK.

Facebook might be the latest hot craze for undergrads--and University Affairs wrote just over a month ago that apparently undergrads these days consider email to have gone the way of the dinosaur and they now prefer Facebook and text messages as their primary mode of communication--but I think this might also soon become the latest craze for faculty too, at least junior faculty. Judging by the impressive amount of grad students who are on it, it's only a matter of time before they get jobs and expand the ranks of faculty on the site, and I have seen some more technologically minded profs on the site already. Personally, I envision it as a great tool for chatting amongst ourselves between conferences. I've already searched to see if any of my SAA conference buddies were on the site (none are, but I encourage them to sign up!). What better way to stay abreast of what others are up to without composing a slew of individual emails when we're already busy grading papers and writing articles? And like blogs, it seems to me to be a great way to break down the isolation that is inherent with our jobs and to socialize and build communities in between expensive, annual conferences. Don't you think? Try it out...