In the middle of class yesterday, I had a student announce that she knew I was a member of the MLA. It certainly wouldn't be hard to guess that an English professor is a member of the Modern Language Association, but I asked, jokingly, "How did you know?" She explained that she had seen me listed on their page. That sounded a little strange. So I joked again, "What, did you Google me?"
"Yes," she said.
Apparently she Googles all of her teachers before she takes a class from them so that she can learn their political affiliations. That way, she can be "careful" around certain professors.
"What did you learn about me?"
"Absolutely nothing," she said.
I pride myself in a scarce online presence. You can certainly see some of the organizations to which I belong, and you can see some of the conferences I have attended, and you can probably find out where I work, but there is not a whole lot of other things one can learn about me online, especially not my political affiliation, unless we're Facebook buddies. In this tech world, one needs to be extremely careful about the information that makes its way to the Internet. I feel like I have, mostly, done a good job with that. Apparently good enough that students are not immediately prejudiced by my political beliefs.
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