Cautionary Words for Future Art-Historic Professionals
Friday July 11, 2008
If your long-term career goals include aiming for key positions (say, the Directorship of a major art museum), be very careful about what you publish now. No, I'm not talking about your dissertation on the Master of Jean Charpentier as seen in the Hours of Philippe de Commynes, I am talking about Facebook. Or MySpace. Or any other social networking site/personal blog to which you post.
Researchers from the University of Florida's Colleges of Education and Medicine just released a study based on their review of 362 UF medical students and residents' Facebook sites. Many of the entries found on public sites--and only 37% of the group's sites were private--contained material one might expect from undergrad and graduate students. Tales of youth, you understand. Parties gone out of bounds, dubious affiliations, deeds perhaps best left unmentioned save for stories amongst close friends later in life. Nothing that most of us old fogies didn't do ourselves, mind you, and usually with gusto, but, and this is key, there was no Internet back in our day.
The moral of the story, future professionals, is this: Anything you put out 'there' on the webernets stays out there and will be attached to your name for the duration. When Fellowship committees, human resources personnel or headhunter firms run a search on your name (and they will) which words of yours do you really want them to see? It's up to you, of course. Just a bit of grist for your Food for Thought mill.
Researchers from the University of Florida's Colleges of Education and Medicine just released a study based on their review of 362 UF medical students and residents' Facebook sites. Many of the entries found on public sites--and only 37% of the group's sites were private--contained material one might expect from undergrad and graduate students. Tales of youth, you understand. Parties gone out of bounds, dubious affiliations, deeds perhaps best left unmentioned save for stories amongst close friends later in life. Nothing that most of us old fogies didn't do ourselves, mind you, and usually with gusto, but, and this is key, there was no Internet back in our day.
The moral of the story, future professionals, is this: Anything you put out 'there' on the webernets stays out there and will be attached to your name for the duration. When Fellowship committees, human resources personnel or headhunter firms run a search on your name (and they will) which words of yours do you really want them to see? It's up to you, of course. Just a bit of grist for your Food for Thought mill.
Comments
Excellent point, Shelley, and not just for future art historians! How many of us have Googled ourselves or our relatives? Our bosses? Our obnoxious neighbors? Rest assured, they’re doing it to you. Even if you don’t think you’re living a high-profile life now, someone later on will find all the online rabbit trails you’ve left behind.
Back in the day, what happened on leave stayed on leave (to quote sailors). Now, forget it. Be sure you publish only what you’d want Granny to see.