The final stages of Social Media for Academics are giving me flashbacks to the end of my PhD. I’ve drunk so much coffee that I can barely sit down, I have Forces of Victory on repeat and I’m alternating between thinking the nearly finished work is brilliant and concluding that it’s utterly shit. Over the weekend, I expect this will degenerate into symphonic power metal and energy drinks as I force myself to do the manuscript preparation & tidying up in one go. This led to a remarkably unpleasant 36 hours during my PhD which was nonetheless a very good idea, given my capacity for procrastination.
However I’m actually quite enjoying it, in a masochistic sort of way, which is rather different to how I felt at the end of my PhD. There’s a diffuse sense of nostalgia about it. After all, it’s the second time I’m doing something which I hope to do many times over the course of my life.
I think I’ve written a good book, with some significant weaknesses – most of which could have been addressed by being much more systematic with my writing and reading process over the last year and a half. For instance, it has little to no grounding in the ed tech literature, which I’m sure will irritate a fair number of people, but I’ve never intended it to be a contribution to this literature so I’m not sure I mind that much. I also think there needs to be a disclaimer on it: “warning, does not contain anything substantive about teaching and social media”.
More positively: I think there are a lot of ideas in the book, covering an extremely wide range of topics. I think I set academic social media in a broader technological and institutional context in an interesting and engaging way. I don’t think it lives up to the rather precise pedagogical vision I had at the start, but I’m confident I’ve written a very useful book. I’m also confident people will find it a thoughtful book. But that’s rather the problem. My thoughts on this subject are still changing on a daily basis. It’s why I find academic social media so interesting. Hopefully readers of the book will accept the invitation to come find me on Twitter & read this blog.
This is the only way I can get myself to declare Social Media for Academics finished and send it along to Sage: it’s a crystallisation of a lived engagement, objectifying ideas that are still very much in motion. Otherwise the fixity of a book frustrates me.
<goes to make more coffee>
Harry Quebert: “A book is a battle”
Mark Carrigan 