There’s a great phrase in business described as “Eating your own dog food,” which is loosely related to “Putting your money where your mouth is,” and has cousins eating chips and drinking ice tea all about the cliché reunion. It means if you are serious about your product, you will use it. I’m teaching English 316 (Technical Communications) at BYU, one of the local universities here in Orem, and am making my good students create and maintain a blog.
Yes this is cruel and unusual, but that’s what teachers are—it is part of the code. The code also includes wearing a sports coat and never combing your hair. But I digress (which is also part of the code) so I will return to the blog discussion and eating my own dog food. I figured the only fair thing to do as I challenged my students to a blog was to expose my little blog as well.
My blog here is a rough draft effort, to be sure, and will probably always be so, but what the hey. If I can do it, they can do it. And they will do it, because they have to, and I will fail them miserably if they don’t, and they will never amount to anything if they don’t… just joshing with you, my beloved students—blogging is still only worth 40/1000 points.
Actually, by exposing myself here and eating my own dog food, I will share the joy and pain of blogging and my students will become worthy citizens in the world of words, as Neal A. Maxwell stated once. And further, as a side benefit to me, they might be inclined to not use as many swear words in their teacher evaluation at the end of the semester.
So welcome English 316 Section 07. May we go forward with our heads held high, ours blogs filled with frivolity and fervor, purpose and pain, alliteration and assonance, Bono and Edge, Dwight and Michael, Fred and Ginger (Flintstone and Grant (Ginger’s last name from Gilligan’s’ Island)) Barry and Regan, chocolate and …more chocolate—European of course. Blog On!
