For our second blog post of the year, it was our job to investigate our professors and see what information we could gather about their past. Professor Teaff and Abdoney both have extensive online profiles in which you can learn a lot from if you look in the right places. This assignment speaks to how much of our personal information is online, whether intentional or unintentional. Below are two little blurbs talking about each professor, as well as a timeline of their lives.
Mary Abdoney. Born in 1977, Mary Abdoney reigns from the good ol’ sunshine state of Florida. Fast forward, Mary attended HB Plant high school and graduated in 1995. After graduating she goes on to the University of Florida. Go Gators. She earned a degree in anthropology. After graduating from the University of Florida she earns a master’s degree in library and information science from the University of South Florida. After finishing her schooling, it seems clear that Mary would like to pursue a career somewhere in a library. She goes to Eckerd College to work as librarian/assistant professor. She was there for four years. In 2006 she comes to Washington and Lee University, the greatest university on the planet, and the rest is truly history. To move on more into Mary Abdoney’s personal and social life, Mary is pretty active on different forms of social media. From what I was able to scavenge, Mary has been somewhat active on twitter and Facebook. I did not see anything for Instagram. She has an interest in library studies as well as political and social topics surrounding our country. I would say she leans to the left in terms of political ideologies. She supported Elizabeth Warren. She is outspoken regarding topics close to home, one being the name change of the university. Regarding family life, Mary is happily married with a relatively young son. Her relationship with her husband, Ned, is straight out of a tv show. She drove every other week to Chapel Hill to see Ned. I get tired when my friends and I drive to the Walmart alone Chapel Hill. She seems very happy and she is loving life.
Elizabeth Teaf. Born in 1974. Elizabeth Teaff is from Columbus, Ohio. It seems she must have moved to New York at some point in her life as she went to high school in New York I believe. She attended Gloversville High School and graduated in 1992. After, she attended Fulton-Montgomery Community College and then went to SUNY Potsdam. She received majors in studio art and politics. After attending SUNY Potsdam, she went to VCU to receive a master’s degree in museum studies/art history, graduating in 1998. Her last part of her educational journey was receiving a library and information science major from the fake USC, University of South Carolina in 2006.It is clear from her education that Elizabeth has interests in library studies, and this is shown through her career path. After coming out of VCU she went to VMI to be a librarian. After, she would choose to stay in Lexington and become a services assistant at the Rockbridge Library. Then in 2003 she would make her move to Washington and Lee University and further her career here, starting as an interlibrary loan coordinator and now being a university library access services manager. Moving on to personal and social life, it seems that Elizabeth has no significant other as of yet. For social media I did not find too much. She seems somewhat active on Facebook with some posts in nature, but outside of that I did not see any posts on the twitter or any social media sights.
After writing this blog post I am incredibly amazed by how much one can find on the internet from simply googling a name. To be fair, both Professor Teaff and Abdoney have revealed a good amount of information on the internet intentionally, but even then, a lot can be found without the person’s consent. I think both Professor Teaff and Abdoney are not distracted by filter bubbles as they both are aware of the issue and can avoid it. The problem is many people around the world are unaware of how everything they see on their screen are perfectly tailored for them based on what they click on the internet. In a recent reading “Facebook Told Advertisers It Can Identify Teens Feeling ‘insecure’ and ‘Worthless.’”, the readers are shown how much access into your life these tech companies have, and technology is only going to keep getting more and more advanced. I think this will actually change the way I use the internet. I will definitely be more overly cautious and more importantly be aware to what I click on in relation to what I see on my computer. Avoiding falling into the trap of targeted ads or targeted Facebook posts is the biggest thing one can do right now to stay ahead of the game.
Sources:
- Levin, Sam. “Facebook Told Advertisers It Can Identify Teens Feeling ‘insecure’ and ‘Worthless.’” The Guardian, 1 May 2017. www.theguardian.com, http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/may/01/facebook-advertising-data-insecure-teens.