All it takes is a simple smile or a thoughtful note to make someone’s day, especially in the world of academia. Noting this, Rabia Gregory, associate professor of religious studies, began a Tumblr blog to encourage kindness throughout the scholarly community.
“Honestly, it started with a conversation I had with a friend on Facebook when I got an unexpected wonderful email from someone who really surprised me,” Gregory said. “A colleague started the blog for me within a couple of hours when I told her I didn’t have time to start it myself.”
Gregory began the blog, “Academic Kindness,” last November. Any member of the academic community can submit posts about acts of kindness they’ve experienced. Submissions have been sent in from all over the world, including Europe, Asia, Australia and Canada.
The amount of submissions to the blog occur in a domino effect.
“When there’s a new submission, 20-30 more come in quickly after that,” Gregory said.
After close to a year of running her blog, Gregory has accumulated about 7,000 followers on Tumblr and (expanded to Twitter)[http://www.twitter.com/academickindnes], where she currently has about 1,000 followers.
Throughout this whole process, Gregory said she hasn’t personally reaped any benefits from her blog, but she has witnessed some unbelievable acts come out of it.
“There are a number of wonderful things, but it’s amazing at how widespread it is that people care about each other, from students on the verge of tears to others in tough financial situations,” Gregory said.
For Gregory, one act featured on the blog stands apart from the rest.
“A student going through graduate school received notice that the dependent insurance for graduate students at the university had changed,” she said. “With his wife and kids, he couldn’t afford to not be insured. But then someone very important in the program paid the rest of the health insurance in full so he could finish school.”
While this was a life-changing event for this student, smaller acts of kindness can also alter someone’s mood.
“It’s also the little things, like sending an email to someone to tell them you enjoyed their book and getting a free copy back,” Gregory said.
The stories on her blog are heartfelt and uplifting for her readers, but that isn’t the sole intention of her blog.
“The stories aren’t just collected to make people feel good, and I feel like a lot of people think that,” Gregory said. “They’re to stress that people need to be kind and respect each other in all parts of the world, not just your little corner.”
Gregory said she hopes Academic Kindness gives others an insight that people, even in the academic world, care about others.
“By publicizing these acts of academic kindness, I want to document compassion and generosity and other examples of kindness to publish as a testimony that not all academics are brutish, self-centered narcissists who delight in tearing apart the work of others for sport,” Gregory said.