introductory post

Hi everyone! As I'm requiring you to complete posts twice weekly for this course, I'll join you in writing about many of the topics here. To distinguish my own responses from the prompts and assignments, I'll use labels to keep things clear:

• "Prompts" are questions/topics that you will be required to answer or discuss on your blog. Prompts are listed for each day in the course schedule, but any changes will be posted as "Prompts" here.
• "Posts" are my own responses to some of the prompts or topics. I won't post on every topic, but I'll participate in many of the discussions emerging on the blogs.
  
• "F.Y.I." will be anything interesting (course-related) that might interest you.
  
• "Unit __" will let you know which course unit the post belongs to.
  

Now that I've clarified a bit, here's my own introductory post:

My name is April Patrick, and I'm your instructor for 20803. I am a PhD student at TCU working in Victorian women's literature, mostly poetry. Most recently, I completed my MA and taught English at the University of Houston. I also taught high school English for a few years in the San Antonio/hill country area and worked in marketing/communications in the Houston area. I have now lived in Fort Worth for a little over a year.

Though I did not choose to 'take' this course, I did choose to teach it and to focus the content on this fall's Presidential election. One main reason for doing so is my personal interest in politics and campaigns on a variety of levels (not just the Presidential election). Another is that I find the rhetoric around politics and elections full of excellent examples for discussion in class. I am genuinely looking forward to discussing with you the many rhetorical choices relating to the election throughout the semester.

I have been extremely interested in politics since I was a high school student. My enthusiasm about politics became much more concrete on the first day of my senior year when my Government teacher suggested that male students are much stronger in government and economics classes and that the female students just needed to accept that. From that day, it was my personal mission to prove him wrong. And along the way, I realized that I truly was interested in government and politics. Now, I'm grateful to that teacher for inspiring me (regardless of whether that was his intent).

Just as I'm asking about the arguments made in your design choices for your blogs, I see many arguments appearing on mine. In designing any course blog, my first priorities are making sure the blog is professional but inviting, which is sometimes a difficult balance. By making those design choices, I am arguing for readers (you) to see this blog as a generally serious space associated with class, but I also want you to enjoy this portion of the class and feel free to write in your own voice. I see blogs as a chance to explore the variety in our writing styles as we learn to balance our uniqueness with the overly academic voice we sometimes rely on in writing for school. Another more obvious argument is included in the link to register to vote on the right side of the page.

I'm really looking forward both to meeting each of you in class and to reading your introductory blogs.