Academic Secret

I think I say "fuck" too much. I blame my parents.

When I started kindergarten, they gave me a talk about places where it was not appropriate to say "fuck" (e.g. kindergarten). Given that I was five years old and had not been watching cable, it seems pretty clear that this was the kind of problem that people bring on themselves. I won't even get into what they named a toy belonging to my sister, but I will say that it was pretty embarrassing when she repeated it in front of an elderly relative.

Some time later, I went off to college. I came back from my freshman year swearing even more than I had before--I think it was some kind of rite of passage deal where you swear a lot to demonstrate that you're Your Own Woman. All my friends were doing it. (Some of my friends also started talking like South Park characters. Peer pressure is a terrible thing.) Unfortunately, in order for me to say "fuck" appreciably more than I'd been saying it before, I basically had to make it every third word of every utterance. I was a liberal arts badass.

Eventually, I toned it back down, but as noted, I wasn't really starting from a normative point on the swearing scale. I still tend to bring it out to express the mildest of affect.

I think the real problem is that my default setting is to say "fuck" a lot. Some people are categorized as People in Front of Whom I Should Not Say "Fuck"--some by general role (priests, kindergarten teachers--I am not so great about remembering this in front of actual kindergarten students) and others by relationship (my grandmother, potential employers). But until I have placed someone in the no-fuck category, I tend to keep saying it. This leads to a lot of after-the-fact reflection along the lines of Fuck! I shouldn't have said 'fuck' that many times in a row to him! He probably thinks I'm a fucking savage!

To make matters worse, I don't think there are reliable linguistic norms on the subject in my field. Okay, so probably you can't go wrong NOT saying "fuck." But it's a lot of stress trying to remember not to, and I have other matters stressing me out plenty.

But I am past the age where anyone is likely to sit me down to have a talk about it, so the lingering fear is: is it worse than I think? Are people talking about me? Do they huddle in the hallways when I'm not around and remark on my lack of breeding? Would it be okay if I was an ecologist? Fuck.

So, if once the invitations go out, people do show up to our party and start posting, you may notice that all of their pseudonyms are colors. Why? Plaid and I thought it would be good for the secret-team-blog aesthetic if the pseudonyms were all connected somehow. Plaid pleaded for us to use causes of death, but, as both the more sensitive and sensible member of this duo, I vetoed that, and eventually we agreed upon colors.

You might object that Clear and Plaid are not colors. Yes, we know this, we are not chromorons. The idea is that the administrator pseudonyms would be names that were associated with colors but not actually colors.

Incidentally, display names in Blogger are easily changed, so if a contributor doesn't like their name/color they can switch any time, although I think doing so will also switch all of their old posts to the new color. To my knowledge, there isn't anything in Blogger that prevents two people on a team blog from having the same display name, although I would assign that to the category of problems whose solution we will wait to ponder until it actually arises.

We have not yet sent the invitations for a.secret, although if you are reading this, we finally must have. When I was in college I knew some guys who decided to throw a party with the theme that you could only wear two items of clothing. They invited a bunch of people and then spent the week fretting about whether anybody would actually come. I suspect Plaid & I will be like this when the first round of a.secret invitations go out. I will be sad if no one comes to our party.

The Two Items Of Clothing Party, meanwhile, was a smashing success. Not that I was there. (And I would tell you if I was, since this is a.secret.)

Hello academic friend, welcome to our secrets.