Let's Light It Up!

My baby, Media Writing and Techniques, is being born today. Well, tonight at 6:00 to be precise. I have no idea how many hours I have poured into this baby since December, but now I'm ready to go live. I'm teaching it at one campus, and my boss is teaching it at the other campus simultaneously, so, you know, no pressure there.

Tonight we're studying the basics of writing for media; tone, clarity, and bias (including logical fallacies); and spending a significant portion on media ethics.

The quote for the first night is (all sessions have an E.B. White quote): “I can only assume that your editorial writer tripped over the First Amendment and thought it was the office cat.”

The devotions for tonight (it's a Christian university, so we do a 10-minute devotional at the beginning of class. I've NEVER gotten to do this before!) are: God's Word is Alive and Active in Me, from Hebrews 4:12 "For the word of God is alive and active. Sharper than any double-edged sword, it penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow; it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart."

Because it's a media class, of course I'll be showing a lot of various clips of things. I get to show one of my all-time favorites tonight. For some weird reason, it won't let me embed, so you can see it here (it's only 1 1/2 minutes). As Jennie knows, one of the main reasons to teach is so you can share as many Office UK and West Wing clips as possible.

I've got eight students and four hours. I feel a little bit like right before my actual babies were born--nervous yet excited. Right now the trickiest part is separating my head from my Thursday night literature class. Hopefully I'll keep everything straight and not start tossing in facts and quotes from Oscar Wilde. Though a quote from Oscar Wilde could only improve the tone of well, anything.

Let's light this thing up!