Did anyone else see this?
Please see the Friday mailblog. This person makes me sick. How can she actually call herself
a Hokie if she's not even going to watch our bowl game. I can't stand fans like this.
Natalya in Rowlett, TX writes: Heather, I have always enjoyed your work but am a new PhD student this year and have actually been grateful that our beloved Hokies (my hubby is VT '99) haven't been worth watching this season. I'm almost done with finals, so tell me: will it be worth watching the Sun Bowl, or will the Bruins beat our boys to a broken-beaked pulp?Thanks for sharing your expertise
HD: Ha, yes, it will be worth watching, Natalya. We ranked the bowls earlier this week, and Andrea Adelson and I thought the Sun Bowl would be one of the more entertaining games of the ACC bowl season. That's due in large part to Virginia Tech's defense, of course. Despite the team's struggles this season, Virginia Tech's defense has remained one of the best in the country. It will get a chance to showcase that against Brett Hundley, one of the top dual-threat quarterbacks in the country. And, of course, it will be interesting to see how quarterback Logan Thomas closes his career. I think the Hokies are going to have a tough time matching UCLA's offense, especially with linebacker Anthony Barr in their faces. Frank Beamer will have those guys prepared, but will the offense be able to execute?
Sorry guys I had to share my disgust.
Comments
[BeatingDeadHorse.gif]
I am not talking about HD. I am talking about this woman that actually wrote this letter to HD.
could be a troll...
Agree with disgust. I feel worse for her husband as she sounds like a high maintenance gal where nothing is ever good enough.
Spoiled fans, spoiled fans everywhere
I might be a spoiled fan but damn it if my Hokies are playing, I am watching! lol
Oh wasn't directed at you, more so at the ACC chat girl. At least most of us here are realistic about our Hokies
Not sure why she can say the Hokies haven't been worth watching. Up until the kickoff of the last game, they were in the running to represent the Coastal. Yes, there have been games we usually count on winning: Duke, BC, Maryland; that didn't go our way, but to say they are not worth watching is weak. You can't be there for the high times and turn your back on the team just because they have to grind it out. She is clearly not a member of TKP and I do not extend her any Hokies respect.
She's probably one of those girls more interested in taking selfies during the middle of third-and-long for the opposing team in Lane.
Sat next to 4 of these girls this year in North, Section E. They had to have set some sort of record for most pictures taken during a football game. I felt bad for the guys across the walkway (we were in Row T, start of the second level) because they kept asking them to take their picture.
After reading the letter, its not clear if she herself went to VT. I know she says "our beloved Hokies", but only mentions her husband going there.
I know that I bend my wife to my will in regards to which teams she can and can not root for (still can't get her to stop saying Boomer Sooner though).
Umm....I didn't go to VT either but I'm just as much as a fan as everyone else....
Be that as it may, I don't expect every person that did not go to VT (or hell, even did go for that matter) to be as diehard as folks like us that actively seek out Hokie blogs.
If anything, it was a WEAk question to post to a mailblog. Telling me that HD didn't get anything with a little more substance to answer out of the tens of e-mails I am sure that fine journalistic piece receives.
See what you did there.
Did Heather get to the more pressing question of whether da U is back next year?
I think it might be more of because she's been so busy with her Ph.D. program (I can totally understand that) that she's glad that she's been able to focus on studies versus watching football games. I won't comment on whether the games have been less watchable or not, but I understand what she's saying - although it could have been worded a little more clearly.
I know there were many times that I was unable to watch games because I was either studying or working in the lab (more than once I was in Fralin or Derring working during home games) - in the end, my education was more important. Does that make me less of a fan?
The graduate course load is not enough to justify this. Also in my first semester, and I watched almost every game. I was at a few of them. Classes will be over by the bowl game. I'll be watching every bowl game because football. Why would anyone not want to support their team in a bowl game?
Not all graduate programs are built the same. I hardly left the lab my first year in the Ph.D. program I was in. For a lot of people, it's not just the course load, there's research and teaching requirements. I wasn't taking a massive amount of credits, but the lab work was more than enough to keep me busy enough to miss games.
I think there are a lot of missing details here. I can understand someone who did not go to VT for undergrad, then coming in for grad school, not having the same intensity and school spirit. Grad school is a different animal altogether and being a "transplant" in a new town/school gives you a different outlook. I'm a postdoc at the University of Maryland right now, and I have no desire to root for the Terps.
That said, I stayed at VT after undergrad to do my Ph.D., and school spirit is part of the reason I hung around. During my Ph.D., I went to every game (except a couple when I was traveling for conferences, which pained me, but I always gave away my ticket freely so someone else could enjoy it), all while taking classes (for the first 2.5 years), teaching, and doing research 60-80 hr per week. You can make it happen if you love it enough. I won't fault someone's intensity if they haven't personally been a part of the culture, though. Simply being married to someone who graduated from VT probably doesn't inspire a lot of loyalty in most people.
I also won't fault anyone who is in grad school who doesn't have enough time to go every week. Sometimes it's just not in the cards and sometimes you need to collect data at specific time points for a month straight or else you ruin an entire grant's worth of money (which can be TONS). If your cells need to be harvested at noon on Saturday, your boss won't be very happy if you had anywhere else you wanted to be. It's the nature of the beast. Fortunately for me, I had an awesome boss who knew that my Saturdays were reserved. He got my full attention the other 6 days of the week, though.
The great part is how she started the letter off with how well she's doing with her PhD in being a hole and looking for a quick applause break for herself.
I hope her and her "hubby" decide to stop watching games. Her elitist bullshit is reserved for another team in the commonwealth.
Screw her and Heather Dinich for thinking we need either one of them to write about us or OUR team.
Good riddance and merry Christmas. I hope your PhD comes in handy when you realize you're a zilch without it.
Well it's definitely no wonder that this question got posted on there. It includes sentences with phrases such as "Heather, I've always enjoyed reading your work" and "expertise."
And just for good measure: