A quick greeting to any ENG 495/595 students who stop by my blog
Today was the first day of a new course that I'm teaching, ENG 495/595 Language, Culture, and Literacy. I'm very excited to be teaching this class. It feels risky--but risky in a good way--because while I have a good deal of scholarly (and also popular culture) knowledge about our topic, I am the complete opposite of a technerd. Thanks to Blogger, I was able to set up this blog easily, but I very easily get intimidated and frustrated when I try to do anything more techy.
At any rate, I gave my students the URL for The Writing Way and encouraged them--you!--to stop by. So I thought I'd post a special greeting in case that happens. So hi there, and welcome!
I also thought I'd write a few comments about the experience of writing for my blog. Keeping a blog has been a very interesting experience for me. Writing my first post to my blog was one of the most difficult and challenging writing tasks I've ever faced. As an academic, I'm used to writing with specific audiences/venues in mind. I had no idea who might find their way to my blog, so I didn't know how to address/invoke my audience.
Someday I hope to do a rhetorical analysis of my posts to this blog. I can see that I developed certain strategies over time. Sometimes when I write about research projects, for instance, I make a little fun of academic jargon--even as I keep it in the body of a conference talk that I might be posting.
I must say that I've been very moved by the generosity exhibited in people's responses. My mother died suddenly last January, and I didn't post to my blog for almost a month. When I returned, I wrote a very brief post on why I'd been away--and I was very moved by the comments I got. Some comments were from people I know, but many were from folks completely unknown to me. I'll never know how they found my blog or why they read my post--or why they took the time to respond so generously and thoughtfully.
On a less serious note, last February when my husband was away--he's usually the one who takes out dog out in the morning--our dog Bachelor was sprayed by a skunk. Since Greg wasn't there, I couldn't say that YOUR dog has been sprayed by a skunk and leave the mess to him, so I had to deal with it. To alleviate some of the awfulness of the situation, I wrote several semi-humorous posts to my blog. I haven't counted, but I think these got more comments than possibly any other posts. I even got a comment from an elderly woman in Corvallis who I often see downtown trying to trap feral cats. (Look for her by the main library late in the day.)
Hmmm. I just realize that I have somewhat lost my train of thought. But this is a post to my personal blog, right? So I don't have to place myself under the same kind of constraints I hold myself to for academic writing.
Again, thanks for stopping by! And if you have a blog, please do send me the URL and as soon as I can I'll take a look.
Lisa
posted by Lisa Ede @ 2:58 PM
3 comments
3 Comments:
I hope you are having some fun with the blog and that it's not all an academic study.
In checking out your blog I realized that I may be a former student. I won't embarass either of us by trying to figure out just when that might have been.
And for anyone else who may read this, I take full responsiblility for my own causual use of English and grammar and punctuatin, intending no ill reflection on Prof. Ede or OSU (go Beavs!).
Enjoy the blogosphere. It will be interesting to see what reaction you get from your current students.
You wrote, "I had no idea who might find their way to my blog, so I didn't know how to address/invoke my audience."
I've had a similar problem because I'm never sure as to who will read my blog. When I first started, it was really a venue for my emotional problems, talking myself through stress, while a few friends read along. Then I started getting a little more serious, and actually started promoting my blog. Issues I now have include mixing political posts with private posts, what kind of tone to take on certain topics, how much to reveal about my personal life, etc. This latter was a particular problem when I was teaching middle school, and I didn't bother to put my full name on my blog until a few months after I quit teaching (because who knew when a student might google my full name and find out about my personal life). But there are a lot of issues with audience, voice, and tone on blogs.
You're definitely right about that, Michael! And the way that blogs save and post comments can add to that. Depending on the day that people visit my blog, they might see a post about the day that my dog got skunked or read a more scholarly entry. So their sense of who I am in my virtual life could vary quite a bit. Of course if someone took the time to read a number of entries they'd get a fuller picture, but I'm not sure how many readers do that.
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