Academic Secret

This is my first post here, so I hope it's good enough. Secret number one: I often don't think I'm good enough to be blogging.

Speaking about secrets, I gotta say I know a lot of them. In my department, I seem to always be wearing a shirt that says "Come spill your guts, I won't tell!"* See, I added the "*" because I usually tell. I am GREAT at keeping secrets. ....Unless I think that someone knowing that secret would be beneficial to the secret sharer. Or unless it's gossip. Or unless I think me telling you a secret will get you to tell me one beneficial to me. And I don't tell if it will hurt anyone.

Now I know what you're thinking. A) your colleagues must be dumb to trust you. I guarantee they are not. I am definitely the least intelligent. Well, maybe except one person. B) How do you know if telling will not hurt anyone? You aren't a psychic are you? Well no. But I am a pretty good judge of people, so I only share when I trust the other person.

Hmm, now to share a secret in vague terms. I can tell you which professor shares a room with their teenage child, which admin is secretly applying for a better job in another dept, why that post-doc really went to that other continent, which professor didn't have an affair with which former post-doc and which professor thinks that he did. But see, if I give any more details to make these secrets more juicy, I might compromise my caveats.

So instead, I will tell you a secret about myself: I am scared of tampons. Ok, that's not academic enough, I agree. I have napped in my office during the day when I was supposed to be meeting students.

Oh my gosh, please don't tell the drunk department head I told you that.