Perhaps this has happened to you. I would like to know if it has. Earlier this weekend I recieved an e-mail from the parent of a student who is a first-year student at SUNY-Cortland. She had read my blog and was dismayed by some of the comments I had made, particularly about SUNY-Cortland as a “jock school” (which is it is). In this case, her daughter is a performing arts students and, as you might imagine, is outside the general social climate of the college.

This mother wanted to know if the college is really as bad as I had described and if I had given up on making the college any better, which is what she had assumed from the tone of my post.

I realize, of course, that my blog is public and anyone might read it. Obviously I also realize that few people do in fact read it. I don’t really think too much about audience when I write here. I’m not trying to convince or impress anyone. Mostly this is a place for me to note things of interest to me and gather my thoughts with some hope that one of my colleagues might have something to say about them.

I’m certainly not thinking of my audience as student parents! And yet I noticed this particular post on “SUNY Cortland and the 13th grade” comes up on the second page of a google search for the school, which tells you something about the competence of our web design.

I wrote to her and told her the College was aware of the challenges of improving the intellectual climate and was making some effort, institutionally, to improve that climate. The problem with the post is not that it says things I want to take back. It’s just that I would say these things differently to that audience. These posts are not carefully crafted. I don’t think that you will find many blogs that are. It’s not really the point. I do plenty of writing that has to be revised and revised again.

So in the end I decided to add a comment onto the end of the post for the next parent reader.