{"id":3233,"date":"2025-05-21T18:35:34","date_gmt":"2025-05-21T22:35:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thunderofwade.com\/blog\/?p=3233"},"modified":"2025-05-21T18:35:34","modified_gmt":"2025-05-21T22:35:34","slug":"the-audacity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thunderofwade.com\/blog\/2025\/05\/21\/the-audacity\/","title":{"rendered":"The Audacity"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

I got an email sent to the webmaster@uakron.edu<\/a> address today and it was a winner.\u00a0 I\u2019m not sure what the category<\/em> was, but it won anyway.\u00a0 The names have been changed to protect, well, everyone involved.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The emailing individual  – let\u2019s call him Ron – was reaching out to connect with someone and gave their full name – but let\u2019s just call her Suzy.  Suzy had submitted her thesis – in 2006.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Hmmm\u2026<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

And Ron would like to connect with her to provide\u2026a correction.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On the thesis.\u00a0\u00a0Submitted in 2006.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Can you imagine having the audacity<\/em><\/strong> to do something like that?\u00a0 To have read a thesis from 2006\u00a0 – here in 2025, mind you – and then send an email to a stranger (me) to try and get an email address for the master\u2019s student in question – to correct<\/em> them?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

I, as you can imagine, cannot imagine doing that. <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

I was a little dumbfounded for a few minutes, then my problem-solving algorithms kicked in.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    \n
  1. The academic department would be a dead-end – it was too far back.<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  2. The thesis would have been published in the library, but any contact info including in the submission would have been long expired. \u00a0 Likely a UA email address in a system that no longer existed.<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  3. I could suggest they try social media, but that seemed too obvious.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n\n\n\n

    And then:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

      \n
    1. Well, if they submitted a thesis, chances are they are an alumnus of UA.\u00a0\u00a0<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n\n\n\n

      So, I called up a colleague in the Alumni office and explained the situation.   And sure enough, our thesis submitter was an alumni and there was a current email address on file. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

      It would be unethical to give out <\/em>contact information, obviously, but I asked if there was a procedure to pass along <\/em>a message.\u00a0 Sure enough, there was – and my colleague was happy to take it from there.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

      I forwarded the note with some official-sounding language in the hand-off, and then my part was done.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

      But, I kinda wanna hear how it turns out. \u00a0 The sensible approach for Suzy would be to just ignore the message. Delete. End of story.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

      Or, she could point out to Ron that everything was correct – and approved by a committee of expert faculty members – in 2006.  If there\u2019s a correction to be made based on new data, well, sorry about your luck, that\u2019s not how that works.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

      Or, it could go, \u201cHow dare you, Ron!\u00a0 I\u2019m coming after you and your children!\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

      In any case, I\u2019m still amazed by the audacity.   <\/p>\n\n\n\n

      Though I guess – in 2025 – it really shouldn\u2019t surprise me.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

      I got an email sent to the webmaster@uakron.edu address today and it was a winner.\u00a0 I\u2019m not sure what the category was, but it won anyway.\u00a0 The names have been changed to protect, well, everyone involved.\u00a0 The emailing individual  – let\u2019s call him Ron – was reaching out to connect with someone and gave their […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"_bluesky_dont_syndicate":"","_bluesky_syndication_accounts":"","_bluesky_syndication_text":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3233","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thunderofwade.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3233","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thunderofwade.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thunderofwade.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thunderofwade.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thunderofwade.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3233"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/thunderofwade.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3233\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3234,"href":"https:\/\/thunderofwade.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3233\/revisions\/3234"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thunderofwade.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3233"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thunderofwade.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3233"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thunderofwade.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3233"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}