For those of you not familiar with the site, Facebook has “status updates” that users can easily change and use kind of like a “mini blog”. It’s a lot like Twitter — so much, in fact, that you can sync your Twitter updates with your Facebook status which a lot of people (like me) do. The following four updates were all written by the same person. Read through them and imagine who, or what type of person, would have written them. (I have removed the user’s name to avoid any embarassment\/conflict.)<\/p>\n

“[x] is alone, that’s what she does best!”<\/p>\n

“[x] is supposed to be looking to the future but is feeling pretty negative about the outlook….I never dreamed that I’d be almost 30 and not be anywhere close to where I’d thought I’d be in life.”<\/p>\n

“[x] says Only six more school days….they can’t go by fast enough- I want my summer break!”<\/p>\n

“[x] says You know that saying sh*t happens? Did they ever say it happens every day? Because it does for me….”<\/p>\n

what kind of person did you envision? A moody teenager? A depressed goth with black fingernails and matching lipstick? Lydia from Beetlejuice?<\/p>\n

Nope. They’re all from Mason’s current school teacher.<\/p>\n

Following someone on Facebook is a two-part mutual process; one person initiates a friend request, and the recipient must then confirm the action. When Susan told me Mason’s teacher was on Facebook, I added her. She then confirmed me. So yes, that means I intentionally added this person to my Facebook page. It also means that she specifically approves her students’ parents. She knows who is reading her posts and this is what she writes. It’s not like I was sneaking around the Internet and happened to find these posts; as a parent of one of her students I added her.<\/p>\n

I’m not sure what I was expecting — wait, yes I do. I was expecting happy thoughts. I was expecting to hear about upcoming school events. I was expecting to see pictures from field trips and things about the school. I was expecting updates from a teacher; instead, I got updates from a borderline manic-depressive.<\/p>\n

Look, I’m not naive. I’m sure there are waiters who think their customers are disgusting pigs and physical trainers who think their clients are lazy and fat, and I am sure that there are teachers out there that don’t love teaching. I just wish I didn’t know about it, especially when it’s my kid’s teacher. I don’t want to know that Mason’s teacher “wishes all of this was just a horrible dream” or is “off to do some soul-searching” (two more recent updates). To be honest I think I’d be a lot happier if I hadn’t read any of the updates; at least then I’d at least have the illusion that Mason had a teacher than enjoyed her job.<\/p>\n

I haven’t said anything to the school or to the teacher about the updates. Today Susan said, “if her updates bother you so much, why don’t you remove her from your Facebook page?” And I did, but that’s only part of what bothers me. The thing that bothers me more is, Mason has a teacher that doesn’t love teaching.<\/p>\n

I don’t remember a whole lot about my first grade teacher and I doubt years from now Mason will remember much about his. I, however, will always remember her as “the depressed Facebook teacher.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

For those of you not familiar with the site, Facebook has “status updates” that users can easily change and use kind of like a “mini blog”. It’s a lot like Twitter — so much, in fact, that you can sync your Twitter updates with your Facebook status which a lot of people (like me) do. The following four updates were all written by the same person. Read through them and imagine who, or what type of person, would have written them. (I have removed the user’s name to avoid any embarassment\/conflict.) “[x] is alone, that’s what she does best!” “[x]… (read more)<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1477","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-main"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.robohara.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1477","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.robohara.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.robohara.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.robohara.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.robohara.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1477"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.robohara.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1477\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.robohara.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1477"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.robohara.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1477"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.robohara.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1477"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}