“Here are my keys, Dr. Jerz. I think I will miss these most of all. Thank you for everything that doesn’t fit in an envelope. Thank you for being my teacher, and friend.” —Amanda Cochran
Here are my keys, Dr. Jerz (Jerz’s Literacy Weblog)
This was a difficult good-bye. I’ve gotten to know many fantastic students here at SHU, but Amanda is the first freshman I have seen all the way through to graduation.
She rose through the ranks at the student paper, all the way to editor-in-chief. She earned top-notch grades, and graduated in three and a half years.
Yesterday, she graduated summa cum laude. And today when I got to the office, I found this note — and Amanda’s keys to the student publications office.
I blogged about Amanda a few weeks into my first term here at Seton Hill, when Amanda was just familiarizing herself with the brand-new SHU academic blogosphere, and settling into her own blog, which she called “Girl Meets World.”
Throughout her Seton Hill career, Amanda has done wonderful things with the keys she was resourceful enough to use. And now there’s a world out there that she — now an accomplished woman — is more than ready to meet.
Thank you, Amanda!
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Oh my God! I think I'm going to cry. That is such a beautiful message! Well deserved. Congratulations, Dr. Jerz for graduating your first NMJ major! There are five others coming down the pike soon and before you know it, you'll have trouble keeping track of us all!
I don't change the passwords or anything when a student graduates, and I don't delete the blog.
Even if I did delete the blog from the MovableType database, the way I have the blogs set up, the database is only queried in order to construct the static HTML pages, and those static pages are what's served up to web visitors. Visitors wouldn't be able to comment anymore, but the blog would remain as a set of static pages.
So Amanda has handed over her physical keys, but what about the virtual ones?
What happens to her Seton-Hill-hosted blog now?
Are alumni blogs kept active and visible? Do ex-students still get to add, update and remove posts? Are these decisions the kind of things which can be changed at the whim of future SHU administrations?
I bet the Seton Hill library treasures old copies of the student paper, and student blogs are every bit as much a historical document.
Best of luck to Amanda: an outstanding student (summa cum laude!!) and terrific blogger (based on what I've read of her work). I'm sure she will do quite well in the future. Good job, Dennis, for serving as a strong mentor as well.