SMU Lecturer Takes Heat For Blog

nasta writes "Houston Chronicle article For most of the past two semesters, nobody knew the identity of "The Phantom Professor." The educator's anonymous Web log, set at an unnamed university "in the South," spun tales of spoiled-rich "Ashleys" with their $500 sandals and $1,500 handbags, eating disorders, plagiarism and drug use, legal and illegal. "At this school it seems like every kid is on multiple medications," the professor wrote, describing her charges as "barely literate," prone to emotional problems and "terrified of displeasing Mommy and Daddy.""

Comments

Zero sympathy

[Otter]

A point that's made in the article (this happened about a month ago, BTW) but is obscured by the piece the submitter chose to quote is this: she was retelling extremely sensitive stories about easily identifiable students and teachers, including things that students were telling her in private face-to-face meetings.

Sorry, zero sympathy from me. Beyond the fact that she blatantly despises half her students and sucks up to the other half by badmouthing the "rich girls" (which is unprofessional enough), violating confidentiality the way she did is way over the line. A tenure-track professor should have been bounced for doing what she did, never mind an adjunct.

Points off to SMU for weaseling about it, though.

Re:Zero sympathy

[DaoudaW]

she was retelling extremely sensitive stories about easily identifiable students and teachers, including things that students were telling her in private face-to-face meetings.

Did you RTFB? She claims and after reading through some of the blog I would agree that she was very careful to protect students' privacy. As a teacher myself, and former adjunct, her stories sound like the typical mix of frustration and admiration that teachers everywhere have for their students. She certainly makes a better attempt at protecting student anonymity than most faculty lounge conversations. She is not writing vitriolic diatribes, but is simply laughing and crying over human foibles.

Re:Amen.

[FidelCatsro]

Ive seen plenty of people With Bipolar diagnosed as Scitzophrenic or other disoders at first by totaly incompetent docters , and a hell of alot more just classed as having a mild clinical depresion ..
One thing ive heard alot is docters going "well your ok now though so perhaps you worked through it" or the likes...And as you most likely know with certain types of Bipolar people can seem totaly fine at times , but try telling that to a GP.
I have often helped folks get things together for taking to the GP and trying to get them some proper treatment .Shoving someone with BP on a Prozac derivitave could have really negative effects and end up making people worse . I think the main problem is lack of funding and not enough competent psychiatric nurses/docters.

Unfortunatly its not just in the USA , Its as bad in the UK and Germany .

Re:Amen.

[Hungus]

I can say that anti depressents and other psychiatric meds work for me. I take 2 drugs for issues that I have and both are mapped physically (one a problem with my addreanal gland and regulation of them , the other a problem with the reticular activating system) I have had these conditions for 27 years and for 22 years I went through counseling, trying to just deal with it, and drug cocktails galore. Finally, I found a doctor who diagnosed me properly and changed my meds. One of the drugs is fast acting as in within 10 minutes there is an immediate change the other acts within an hour with its peak in 4 hours. One condistion is known as akankastic disorder the other what you would commonly know as severe ADD. So here I am one person answering your post and saying drugs do have an effect and can change people's personality effectively immediately. I will note that most older drugs do take a week or two to build up to sufficient levels. Also note that I have taken a lot of different medications over the years (currently my meds cost about 600 dollars a month) and even though many of them are supposed to affect the same chemicals since everyone's chemistry is different they may or may not have an effect on any particular individual.

There's farked and there's farked

[suitepotato]

My wife is on depression meds, the right ones now, which address the bipolar symptoms of what was regarded as garden variety manic depression with an accent on depression. No more violent outbursts, much more rational thought, much more mature behavior, much greater happiness.

I probably should be on meds but practice willful almost psychotic disassociation from myself and my cares and instead go right past all the stages, right past acceptance, to someplace riding the wave ahead of everything. This place is called DILLIGAF Land. It's why I don't smack people with a keyboard when they pronounce TCP/IP "tee cee pip".

There are such things as these intrusions on normal thought processes, and partly they are of our own making. The modern world as I've noted before seems hellbent on a concept that the whole world is wrong, unfair, we're screwed before we start and can never win, it's someone else's fault, boo hoo hoo. When you hear this over and over again, you can't help but be affected by it. I think this common mindset in the west, most especially that seen in America, is one of the things working to subconsciously hobble us.

Then there's the real chemical imbalance issues which people have always had, but used to have more societal back-up and reinforcement in fighting. A lot of very secretly screwed up people kept it that way largely, secret. They kept it under control. These days, society isn't helping. Now you're on your own if you want to fight those feelings. In fact, you're encouraged to let them run free and loose. And appear on Springer or Povich.

I used to think everyone was just farked and lazy and if I could go without meds and manage and behave, then so could they. I've come to realize their collectively created social environment has already gone too far round the bend for it to be easy for any one unexceptional person. My psyche's little quirks just seem to lend themselves to sitting between apathy and disinterest. I recommend to everyone that the last person they need to concern themselves with is them and yet, the first and only one. It's a matter of how. You have to cut your emotional attachments to your old sense of self and rebuild a new one based on rationality and not chaotic FUD. My world ended a long time ago and I feel fine. On with the new world.

Re:Amen.

[Mr. Slippery]

And how can so much of the population have such a hard time with it, that they need to be prescribed drugs just to step outside their door or go have dinner in a public place or get their ass to work?!

Because over the past few decades we've created a seriously dysfunctional society.

High population density, a highly moblile society resulting in looser and less supporting family and social bonds, an economy where fewer and fewer people do any sort of meaningful work and there is deliberate pressure to increase consumption, ecological devistation, the degradation of the mental environment, the fear of weapons of mass destruction (at least global thermonuclear war seems a lot less possible these days)...

Constant low-level stress can be much more damaging than simple direct threats.

Of course part of the problem is the overmedicalization you mention; if every cranky moment is a "mental health" disorder for which we can sell you a drug, so much the better for the bottom line of Our Beloved Corporate Masters (TM). But that's only a small part of the overall problem of a system that's working against, rather than for, human happiness.