Infernally childish (#1413)

Topics/tags: Autobiographical

This past fall, Information Technology Services (ITS) added a new feature to campus email and other Microsoft products: Most documents now include the word Internal at the bottom. Email messages from staff and administrators to others on campus include the word [1]. Why? I’m not sure. Perhaps I’ll ask someone.

People who know me know that I can be surprisingly childish. No, not childlike, with that sense of wonder. Rather, I’m childish, I do stupid things for stupid (or no) reason. My legendary dad jokes are childish. The occasional live rewriting of class policies is childish. Some might even call my posting of problematic campus signs childish. That’s okay; it’s part of who I am.

That may have seemed like a strange transition. Don’t worry; the topics of the two paragraphs will soon merge. Now seems like a good time.

At some point during the year, when writing to a friend, I used variants of the word internal in my signatures. Nocturnal. Diurnal. Eternal. Since I was jesting with a friend, I’d call this amusing, but not childish.

After a while, I got bored. So I made a change to my email signature to match (or approximately match) what I was getting from others on campus. In many cases, my signature ended with the word infernal. At times, I switched the capitalization to Infernal.

Why did I do this? As I said, I’m childish. I also wanted to see if anyone commented on it.

I’ve sent infernal email [2] to the President, the Dean, folks in ITS, FM, friends, acquaintances, students, colleagues, and more. Has anyone commented on it? No!

Now I’m left wondering: Do people completely ignore the word, or do they see it and say to themselves, There’s Sam being childish again? I have no idea.

In any case, now that I’ve revealed this childish habit, I suppose it’s time to drop it and move on to another one. Or perhaps I’ll hope that others also adopt or adapt the habit.

[1] Email from faculty doesn’t automatically include internal. I don’t know why not. Perhaps they were afraid we’d rebel. Or maybe someone invoked academic freedom. Like many things on campus, these kinds of decisions are far from transparent.

[2] This is, email that ends with infernal or Infernal. It’s not email that harshly flames the recipient. I’ve calmed down.

Version 1.0 of 2026-06-14.