Mean spirits

Despite my age, I'm still shocked by mean-spirited email or comments I get from time to time. Someone who disagrees with a post here begins a comment with "another vanity blog by a so-called writer," which doesn't bother me because it's an ignorant cheap shot but because it's simply mean=spirited. I harbor this theory that some of these comments come because I've identified myself as a professor and the commenter has had a bad experience or several with past professors and here's an opportunity to get even. Mean-spiritedness comes from somewhere. You see something similar in student evaluations at the end of the term, where every student in the class gives you a certain "good" mark in an area -- except one, who fails you. I wonder where this comes from.

But I don 't lose any sleep over it. And I filter the comments here but I let these negative ones pass because the commenter provides his own context.