20190403.0430

To return to the idea of LinkedIN for a bit: Given the explicitly "professional" orientation of the platform (despite the "intrusion," decried by a number of users I have seen, of personal information into it), there should be no surprise in the presence of ads spread throughout it. Even as I write this, in my own messaging, there is an ad for an EdD program--and it is bracketed by an ad for an MS in Library Science program. I am not an entirely inappropriate audience for either, to be fair; I have mulled over getting a library science or library and information sciences degree, and I am someone who has some small interest in research into education. But I think that the advertising misses the mark with me--and if it does with me, then it likely does with others, as well.
As I think on it, though, I find that I am not surprised that the LinkedIN ads are not entirely on-target with me. Although I am profligate in what I have added to my feed on that platform--and I probably ought to go through and weed it out a bit--there is a decided slant to my interactions and self-portrayal on it. I have not attended to the platform as I ought to have done in quite some time, so it still shows me as I was when I was trying most to find a full-time position in academia. It is an area in which having additional credentials might be an asset; I can easily imagine having an MLS and a PhD opening more jobs for me, or an EdD and my PhD doing so. And since most of the job experience I cite was and still is academic...
Given all that, I have to wonder how much an academic I come across as being in other platforms. I know I still must to some extent. For example, my other regular blog, the more professional one, still makes class reports, and it does do much to remark on current events in academe, responding to pieces in the Chronicle of Higher Education and others. This webspace notes my continued involvement in academic life, and I am sure there are other indicators that are perhaps not quite as obvious to me but that ring of being written in a velvet-paneled gown and terrible, terrible hat to those whose eyes for such things are keener than mine can be. (Some, such as my usual sentence length and my predilection for semicolon use--or even for using words like "predilection"--are clear even to me, and few of us see ourselves well.) The extent, though, I do not know; unlike many cases, though, I think I would like to know how I come out on that score.
There are things I could do for myself to make such an assessment. It would not be much of a challenge to run a reading-level test on what I write, to generate such a number and compare it to the kinds of writing done by academics and by others to see what my writing looks like in such light. But I would be worried about the observer effect, as well as by possible recursion, so insights into how I read and how far up my own ass I read as being would be welcome.