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"As subconscious neural patterns, excuses can direct the course of events. As perceptions, they best predict actions you will take."
Dr. Athena Staik, in her August 2011 blog post for PsychCentral.com, titled Making Requests – 5 Reasons We Avoid Them (and 15 Excuses), explains why some people choose to complain or suffer in silence rather than coming right out and saying what it is that they want (from a relationship, from a work situation, from life in general).
The majority of the blog post holds no relevance to my thesis, but Dr. Staik’s quote about excuses goes right to the heart of my personal journey writing a thesis.
I’m declaring a personal War Against Excuses in my life. At the moment, I’m none-too-confident that I’ll prevail, but perhaps by “outing” every excuse my traitorous brain concocts, I can limit the amount of power these excuses may wield over my success or failure.
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War Against Excuses
I’m declaring a personal War Against Excuses in my life! I can’t take the inaction, the guilt, and the overwhelming feeling of falling further and further behind where “I ought to be” for one more second!
So, even though I can’t guarantee that I’ll be any more successful in writing my thesis by exposing these [lame] excuses, I hope to be able, at the very least, to invalidate the excuses that have, up until now, prevented me from achieving the level of productivity and creativity I know I am capable of.
I’m waging this War Against Excuses right here on writingmythesis.com by setting up a new page, The Excuse List, where I’ll list every new excuse, and whenever possible, I’ll list every reason an excuse is not valid. You can help by adding your own excuses to the list
(or reasons mine don’t hold water!) in the comments section. -
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What is important about a connectivist course, after all, is not the course content. Oh, sure, there is some content — you can’t have a conversation without it — but the content isn’t the important thing. It serves merely as a catalyst, a mechanism for getting our projects, discussions and interactions off the ground. It may be useful to some people, but it isn’t the end product, and goodness knows we don’t want people memorizing it.
…the process of taking the course is itself much more important than the content participants may happen to learn in the course. The idea of a connectivist course is that a learner is immersed within a community of practitioners and introduced to ways of doing the sorts of things practitioners do, and through that practice, becomes more similar in act, thought and values to members of that community. To learn physics, in other words, you join a community of physicists, practice physics, and thereby become like a physicist.
"Dimension Referenced: Thinking Inward Although there have been a few new technologies introduced to me in my Emerging Educational Technology class this semester, the most significant lesson I have learned thus far is not as much about the technology as it is about people’s acceptance of technology. In particular, my perception of how eager educators are to adopt new technologies has changed.
The conversations with elementary, intermediate, and high school educators I have participated in this semester have shown that these educators have a real desire to integrate technology into their classrooms.
Why then, is there still such a gap between the availability of educational technologies and the implementation of these technologies in our schools?!
My [revised] impression, based on these same conversations, is that it is not the educators themselves, but the education system as a whole, that stands in the way of progress.
On an unrelated note, if I could add a title to this post, it would be what one professor I know loves to tell her students: “Process is Paramount!”
Stephen Downes, in his article ‘Connectivism’ and Connected Knowledge on huffingtonpost.com in January 2011.
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"There’s an awful temptation to just keep on researching. There comes a point where you just have to stop, and start writing. When I began, I thought that the way one should work was to do all the research and then write the book. In time I began to understand that it’s when you start writing that you really find out what you don’t know and need to know."David McCullough (via austinkleon)
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Dimension Referenced: Thinking Inward
I’ve been really struggling to keep up with my responsibilities lately. Late assignments, missed deadlines at work, and a frustrating case of writer’s block have taken a toll on my confidence over the past few weeks.
When Steve Jobs died I spent some time reflecting on what made him (and his company) such a force in the world. It gave me a pretty good kick in the pants. Steve Jobs worked hard. He asked a great deal of his employees and of himself. He refused to settle for anything less than extraordinary, and he pushed himself and those around him further than anyone could have ever predicted.
Steve Jobs achieved impossible feats.
He was an ordinary man. He didn’t have any super powers. My goals aren’t nearly as lofty as being a billionaire or becoming an iconic figure!
So, what’s keeping me from achieving my own goals?! I don’t know the answer yet, but I’m hell-bent on figuring it out…
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A Call to Action…if only!
Reflection Journal Post #3
Dimension Referenced: Thinking Forward
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton recently spoke to attendees of the U.S.-India Higher Education Summit about the need for educational collaboration between the two nations:
“Educational collaboration is a driving force in this strategic dialogue,” Mrs. Clinton told the attendees, noting that both countries believe an educated citizenry is crucial to the health of their democracies. She encouraged attendees to “consider no idea off-limits, no outcome impossible.”
It’s that last line that really struck me.
What if we applied Mrs. Clinton’s charge to other areas of higher education? What if we took for granted that we in academia should “consider no idea off-limits, no outcome impossible”?
Color me an idealist (you wouldn’t be the first), but I like to imagine that if those of us in academia (or aspiring to be) ran with this idea, 21st century education would look much, much different.
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"We lament when things are taken from us, and I’d say that Jobs’ death (like Henson’s, like Disney’s) took a valuable lens onto the world from all of us still here. His way of seeing gave us a desirable path forward, and offered a way to live better with all of this technology. It was a way built on empathy and laced with magic. Technology and design have the potential to be life-enhancing, and I have never felt that more acutely than when using the things Steve helped make. Jobs liked to say computers were a bicycle for the mind, and with that understanding came something that was always left unsaid: a bicycle can be used for a commute, but it should also be used to joyride."
I’ll probably post my own Steve Job’s tribute/how-he-changed-my-life story a little later in the week, but I came across this beautiful reflection by Frank Chimero just now and I really wanted to share it with you.
Please check out the original post for the rest of Frank’s response to Steve Jobs’ death.
About me
I'm a graphic designer by day, a graduate student writing her thesis by night, and a devoted, albeit somewhat distracted, wife every moment in between.
My research interests include the generational differences between Digital Natives (Millennials) and Digital Immigrants (Gen X'ers & Boomers), and the future of higher education in light of these differences.
