My Grey World

My professors in SMU are so cool that they have MSN accounts and encourage us to contact them via the messenger.

It’s pretty fun.

“Hi Prof, I encounter some difficulties doing the project… Do you have time to help me?”
“Hello prof, do you mind if ask you some question?”
“Hey prof, I have a question”
“Hey prof, you there?” *nudge*

But here’s the thing.. If you added them.. That means you’re their “friend”. Which means.. They can see your MSN Profile. And who the hell in the world doesn’t put personal things in MSN Personal Message? And especially those people who even put it in their nicknames.. Seriously, I have 200++ MSN contacts and I don’t expect to remember and associate all the e-mails, ok. At least put your name in the nick. Pretty pretty puh-leezzz.

Examples of common personal messages…
“Agggghhhh!!! School is killing me!!!”
“SMU is evil”
“I hate SMU”
“”

and so on and so forth. And yeah, it’s an opportunity to “stalk” you. Most people don’t understand that their mood fluctuation can actually be visioned just by paying attention to their PMs.

So? Do you feel comfortable that your professors (and they are PROFESSORS not for a dumb reason, ok) are able to see your personal feelings? This is the same case when your professors have facebook (some of them really do) and added you to be their friend. Now they can see your stories! Your status updates, your relationship stories, your crazy photos at the crazy party last night, etc etc…

Well, I don’t.

So I decided to block my professors on MSN. And I only unblock them when I need to talk to them.

Sounds evil? Unethical?

Most of my friends will say that I am evil/unethical/insert-thesaurus-here. Well I know, it might not be polite, and it’s kinda annoying. You only “use” a person when in need?

But for the sake of privacy….?

My principle is.. When I can control who to see my private stuff, I will control it.

The block feature in messengers is built not for nothing, rite?