Andrea says that I’m simply too nice, but I do probably talk to too many students. It doesn’t help that I’m probably more opinionated than I ought to be. Combined with working in a journalism school, I find myself saying things that frequently find their way into print. Of course, I often wonder if anyone ultimately reads those things I say. A recent experience talking with a student about DynamicBooks was a fairly good one. I have a tendency to talk through the complexity of an issue rather than making it clear cut, which either has me come off sounding like an idiot (which, perhaps I am) or on a side of the argument that I’m not on. But the student managed to capture that there are really several issues at play with this particular gimmick.
While I wish the article that attempted to advance an argument, rather than just presenting Kent and I’s comments, it was an interesting experience in not feeling like only one aspect of my comments were taken into account in the writing of the article. I wonder if Kent feels the same way, it is his picture that made its way onto the page…
What, the student didn’t make it clear she was interviewing you? Isn’t that a breach of ethics at some level?
No, she did make that clear, but often they don’t offer me a chance to see an article and my quotes prior to publication, which means that sometimes I get mis-quoted. In this case I was happy with the quotes she pulled. I was pleasantly surprised.