Stalking My Professors (With Consent)
In one of my current courses, “Black Mirror and Digital Culture”, I was assigned the task of stalking my professors, Abdoney and Teaff, online and creating a timeline then analyzing what I’ve found. In reality no one wants to think about their professor’s personal lives let alone stalk them but since it was assigned I had to dig up some dirt. I am a huge fan of online stalking but not when the people I am stalking know I am doing it because it kind of makes it awkward, but I definitely love getting the chance to put my imaginary detective fedora on and get my stalk on.
Just by searching “Elizabeth Anne Teaff” I saw multiple of her social media pages, her page on W&L’s website, and her own personal website. After looking rummaging through her online presence for a couple hours I learned Professor Teaff has a thing for cats, flowers, and spiders. She has had countless hair colors which she uses to express her “quiet & quirky” personality. I also learned that she is a fan of the show “Queer Eye”, a show that I absolutely love, and she supports the LGBTQ+ community. As I dug deeper I learned that she was born on June 16th, 1974 and has had extensive education throughout her life. She graduated from Gloversville High School in 1992 and continued school with an Associates, Bachelors, Graduates, and a Masters degree. She began working at Washington and Lee University in 2003 as an Interlibrary Loan Coordinator and after four years she became University Library Access Services Manager. In 2016 she moved into the adorable cottage on 22 Maple Ln in Lexington Virginia. In 2016 her kitchen was painted pink and I am unsure whether it is still that color but it was super cute. On May 23, 2019 Professor Teaff and Professor Abdoney spoke at Blended learning in liberal arts conference on the topic of digital and informational literacies where they spoke about the Black Mirror and Digital Culture course that I am currently enrolled in.
Professor Abdoney was a little more difficult for me to find information on. Although I could see her social media I found very little that would help me with this assignment so I dug harder. Once I found that her husband’s name is Ned Norland all the pieces began to come together. Professor Abdoney was raised in Tampa Florida where she attended High School at H.B. Plant. She pursued an undergraduate degree at the University of Florida and received her masters from University of South Florida. I also found that she met Ned Norland online in 2008 and they eventually got married on September 29th, 2012 at the Castle House on campus. They have a website together called maryandned.com and it is the cutest thing I’ve ever seen. It seems as if they made it for their wedding so people would know how to get to Lexington, where to hangout, where to eat, and where to eat. On the site they also talk about things about themselves where they say how they took turns driving to Chapel or Lexington on the weekend for almost four years that is around 80,000 combined hours of driving just to be with the person you love and that is absolutely amazing. After looking through her social media I learned that she has a son and often enjoys gardening, sewing, and taking pictures of her feet. She often tweets about our president and based off of that and the content of the tweets shes likes and retweets she is most likely liberal.
From addresses to phone numbers and maybe even credit scores all of it is at the touch of our fingers and is not hard to find. The amount of information on the Internet is surreal and we never think it could just be ordinary people’s personal information but it is all out there. It causes me to fear for the future as I begin to progress in my life and know that soon all of my personal information will be on the Internet without my consent.In an article titled “Your Digital Footprint Matters” by Eric Sheninger he discusses what a digital footprint is and how our’s will follow us whether we consent to it or not. A digital footprint is the rementents of your activity on the Internet ranging from your posts online to what you are viewing online, it also includes what others may put online about you. A passive digital footprint is when data is collected without the owner knowing, I’m sure everything I found online was either put online by the professors or they knew about it but I’m sure if I searched hard enough I could find information that they did not even know was being collected about them and that is scary. Eric Sheninger said “your digital footprint paints a portrait of who you are as an educator, leader, school, or district. Make sure it conveys your true values and work.” Every time we use the Internet a trail follows where we have been and that information could be used against. In an episode of Black Mirror called “Hated in the Nation” social media users faced life altering consequences for their actions online. Once they posted something it couldn’t be taken back and that is just how it is now. We have to be aware of what we do online and be sure not to abuse the Internet because in the end it could come back with detrimental effects.
