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| Am I doing this thirsty graphic right? |
Math Man's post mentioned that students alerted him to our blog. That reminded me that it was a student (probably not the same one) who originally showed Rate Your Students to me so many years ago. Conan's post got me thinking about people coming and going. Apparently, there are some students out there who appreciate the highbrow discourse that we find on this page.
Here's your question:
1. How did you find out about College Misery? If you were around in the old RYS days, how did you find out about that?
B. When did you start reading CM or RYS?
III. Did you go back and read a bunch of the archived posts or did you jump in and never look back?
Don't make Cal get out that thirsty explanation again!!!
ReplyDeleteI think people's responses will help our marketing strategies. We'll finally know which is more effective: coupon mailings, sign flippers or viruses that hijack web browsers to our page.
DeleteToo late, Les. Here is one of the more recent rants about what thirsty are which.
DeleteOMG! The counter actually flips while you're on the page?!?!?!?! That is blowing my mind. As I'm typing this it is MOVING. 6615766, 6615767, etc.
DeleteHow many times have I been here and never noticed it?
The counter rolls on as the Earth rotates as our arm of the Milky Way spins.
DeleteI can't look away from the sign flipper. Thanks, Ben!
DeleteStarted reading RYS about its second year. The transition to CM was at the beginning painful, but it was, ultimately, the creation of a different -- under some aspects more fun -- community.
ReplyDeleteI found RYS after it had shut down. I was googling an article I had seen on rating students and found the blog, and was very sad about its closing. Then I followed it over to CM and was happy to see the ideas and community develop. So that was what? Three years ago? Has it really been that long?
ReplyDeleteI found Rate Your Students about mid-way through Year 1 of its existence. I am an archive reader, so I consumed the whole enchilada.
ReplyDeleteI don't remember exactly how I found it, but I'm 99% sure it was either:
a) a Google auto-complete for the site-not-to-be-named, or
b) a link/blurb on InsideHigherEd dot com (I lean toward this explanation, for whatever that's worth.)
The email has been high for this, Ben. Great question. I've done a rough aggregation of notes that have come in and here are some results:
ReplyDeleteFound CM through IHE blurb or story: 9
Found CM through RYS link AFTER RYS died: 7
Was a RYS reader beforehand: 14
Once found it, read everything on both blogs: 22
Just staying up with since found: 6
Some comments (really, because I can't make this shit up):
Is Ben married? He's the best.
I so want to join the fun, but I'm too afraid of being found out. My misery seems too department-specific.
I sometimes want to comment on the old posts but I know not many people probably read them. I only get to the page at the end of the day, and all the drama is over!
Why would anyone say we shouldn't have this page? I get so PO'd when a troll or meanie writes that we're doing a bad thing. We're saving lives, people!
If I may respond to the comment, "Is Ben married? He's the best."
DeleteYes I am.
Good answer.
DeleteAre there different versions of that particular graphic? I know there's one with more stuff on it, and some flowers or something? I love the Early Thirsty one that has an image of a lecture hall with early thirsty spelled out on the desks. That's awfully good. Too good for us and our history of fuzzy, shitty graphics.
ReplyDeleteOh, how did I find College Misery? A little salty, to be honest.
Hiram, that's a great answer. I'll be stealing that line, thank you.
DeleteI browsed the RFG (repository of fuzzy graphics) that you created. This was the first "thirsty" picture I found. Luckily, it wasn't for a Friday Thirsty.
I remember a massive field of ice, an Ice Giant and an enormous white cow. The cow licked at the ice in one spot until an Asgardian emerged.....this new creature was Buri, later to be called Tiwaz, and he took an Ice Giant wife. From her loins sprang a line of God-men, and three of the sons created Man and Woman from a pair of birch trees on a beach. After a lot of fuss and bother these "humans" created an "Internet", and from that digital soup sprang "Rate Your Students."
ReplyDeleteAs with all things they were not consulted about, The Party was not pleased and they sent me here to investigate, being as I am a member of The Party's "special" police.
So the three sons of the god-men plus you make up the four members of the compound?
DeleteDo you not know the Viking story of Creation when you see it?
DeleteI found Rate Your Students in 2006 or 2007 while looking at The Website That Shall Not Be Named and wondering "surely there's gotta be pissed off faculty members somewhere who get to rate students and talk smack about them. Otherwise this whole thing is way too one-sided." I Googled "rate my students" and lo and behold I found RYS!
ReplyDeletePS I took my pseudonym from one that the RYS moderator gave me for one of my submissions that got posted (as at that time the mod was the one who gave submitters their 'names').
DeleteI can't remember the date, but that was how I found RYS too. I surfed the archives, not obsessively, but mostly kept checking the current posts.
DeleteThe RYS link to CM brought me here within a month or two of its start. I lurked here a long time before starting to reply and then to post. Often I can't keep up with it daily, but when I come back I do read all the recent archives to get back on track.
There was nothing ever more enjoyable than coming up with the horrible names. (Except, of course, for developing the blurry graphics.)
DeleteOh, Poopie, was that really you back then, too. How neat.
DeleteHells yeah! That was the submission!
DeleteIt's really upsetting to me to see a professor use the phrase "hells yeah."
DeleteNOT.
Although I do not comment much, I've actually been around since RYS. I found it during its first year when I was simultaneously finishing my PhD and holding my first full time position. I was using academic blogs to supplement poor/absent mentorship.
ReplyDeleteMe too.
DeleteIt's all Walter's fault. He did this to me!
ReplyDeleteYou crazzy, crazy mofus. I started it all. There WAS a small electronic bulletin board that struggled for a while called RageYourStudents, but then I got on board, made some terrific suggestions, and then the Internet was born, and Kim Kardashian, too, and then I made up the recipe for an appletini, just as something to wash the barrel of my rifles.
ReplyDeleteIt's all in the infernal documents somewhere. That fucker Cal probably will contest this, but I know for a fact he listens to ABBA, so you can't trust anything out of his mouth.
Walt, nobody is as crazzy as you. I've had the occasional problem with some of your schtick, but I know down deep you're a peach. This paragraph from the link in your comment made me laugh hard and deep. You are a freaking genius:
DeleteNow, I want to talk about personalizing your office. Your office is a representation of your own peculiar makeup, your personality, your "sense." You owe it to your visitors to let them know what they're getting into. Now, you may be surprised to know that I cover my office door with pictures of kitties. Nah, just kidding. That's just a payoff, a comeback, to show I read the site and have seen all the cat-haters getting their cat-hate on lately. So, forget what I said. You know what people should see when they look at your door? Wood. That's it. Maybe a small piece of paper with your hours and name. Anything else is just jerking off. You morons who think that Dilbert and Cathy cartoons are the way to go, why don't you just knit a little tea cozy for all your students. Nobody gives a shit what cartoons you think are funny. You want your political bullshit up there, too, your union minutes, your Sarah Palin propaganda? Save it for your boring dinner parties with other eggheads like you.
Now, now, Kimmie, don't pick on Walter. For all we know, he might really BE that way in real life! ;-)
Deleteread RYS before it retired to spend more time with its family. Have no idea how I found it. Was one of the original refugees here from RYS.
ReplyDeleteSame here. Exactly the same, in fact.
DeleteMore or less likewise; I even had a paragraph published in one of the RYS aggregates, in spite of my callowness.
DeleteI suppose I've been around as long as anyone. Found RYS early on. I still find it to be a miraculous place, even all these years later. I was very pissed when they took down a large number of posts at the end. I emailed Cal (I think) about it and never got a good answer. They went from 5000 posts to 1000, and I think it was a huge mistake.
ReplyDeleteBut this is not about that.
I want to say the off chance that Walt would actually show up on CNN one day always kept me tuning in to RYS, and when the transition happened and I saw so many familiar names here, I knew College Misery was for me, too.
There was something - for me, I'm not saying it for anyone else - more special about RYS. There is a sort of "professionalism" here that strikes me as discordant with the whole idea of such a blog.
And, despite the fact that I get to comment whenever I want, I often think the comment threads devolve into such miserable conversations, that we've lost the whole point of complaining about college misery. We start making more of it ourselves!
But, I'm grateful it exists, and love keeping up with the amazing cast of characters. I know a good number of the regular members better than I know my colleagues, and I trust them a lot more with my own ideas and fears.
Long live us.
I really don't remember when I first found RYS or CM. I think it was yesterday. Or last week. Or maybe tomorrow. It's all very confusing. I do low that I miss Yaro.
ReplyDeleteShit. I can't spell.
DeleteI've been around since the old days and a couple of times had some of my commentary posted--I was lauded, in fact, for my use of "fucktard," which has since been added to the parlance all up in here. I was lead there, and thereafter to here, by clicking a link over at Whatladder's place; I had found *her* site by following a link from iasshole...how I found her is lost in the mists of time. I spent most of a mid-winter break reading archives and alternately weeping and howling and chortling and guffawing whilst downing bowls of Special K and gulps of tequila. That week steeled me for my return to the toughest group of high school freshmen I have ever been charged with fostering in my 25-year career. And I have sipped righteously here ever since.
ReplyDeleteI was on January visit to my in-laws place two time zones away in 2008. Discovered it over coffee one morning while the rest of the house was asleep. Did not move from the table until mid-afternoon when I had finished the entire archives. Have seldom missed a day since.
ReplyDeleteI started with RYS. Was there life before? I can't remember it.
ReplyDeleteI found RYS during the spring, right before it shut down. I found it the way others here had----because I was MAD about RYP and wanted to know if anyone was dissing students online. But of course, the site is much, much more than that.
ReplyDeleteI started reading RYS as an undergrad in 2008. During the downtime at my work study job, I enjoyed reading individual professorial blogs, and I believe one of them linked to RYS.
ReplyDeleteI was at a green-lawns-and-good-feelings SLAC that mostly exists for upper-middle class B average high school grads who just want to hang out and drink for four years, do some community service (and hopefully get their picture on the college website for doing it), and leave with a degree in Marketing or whatever.
It thrilled me to read about professors who wanted to hold students to higher academic standards, and who called students out for their lackadaisical b.s. in regards to the curricular aspect of college. It made me wonder how many of my own professors felt the same, secretly. It made me think about how I approached my work and how I presented myself as a student. It reminded me to not grade grub and to not be a pain in the ass.
Now I'm a grad student, and I still read CM a few times a week. I don't post and rarely comment because I am not a professor and my only TA experience so far was as an undergrad, so I know that my experiences and complaints are not on the same level. But I still read.
I met CM via RYS. I met RYS via possibly the Chrampicle or I might have just googled something like, "Rate your Students" because I went onto the Site-That-Shall-Not-Be-Named. I am/was a student and yes, I wanted to see what was being said about some of my instructors. Most of the comments are awful. The site also has a section called, "Professors Strike Back." That was enlightening. Anyway, thank you all for RYS and CM. It helped me realize where I was being a snowflake, cured me of the affliction, and fills me with outrage about how professors are treated. WTF. And, well, your posts are thoughtful. Thanks.
ReplyDeleteOh,answer the whole question! Snowflake!
ReplyDeleteRYS closed up a few months after I learned about it.
Yes, I dug in and read all of the posts. I wish all of them were still there, but so be it.
I learned of this site about nine months ago during a Google search on "helicopter parents" for reasons that will go unexplained just now. I was hooked. I read a few then-current posts, then went back the beginning; I thought I might be able to contribute, but should not do so before bringing myself up to speed on the nature of things. I have read all of the CM and some of the RYS posts up to this one, and I am glad that I did, for the information has been invaluable as I've navigated the rough waters of my own academic misery.
ReplyDelete