Surprisingly, this project has required much less personal mental anguish than is usually part of my work flow.   Things are   sorting themselves out with careful thought by diligently following the steps in the assignments, but lacking the usual tortured awkwardness.   I suspect rather than having   much to do with me, this should be mostly credited to the nature and pace of the assignments themselves, so thanks to you Owen!

Perhaps, in addition, I have also started to fully embrace my process and trusted that if I just kept moving forward everything would sort itself out.   Or perhaps, taking two classes this semester has put a time limit on how much I can overthink every single detail and forced me to move forward at a pace that was, for me, very productive and freeing.   I am not sure, but suspect a combination of these things to be true and I trust Fink would be happy that I have become more efficient as a learner and a teacher.

Selection of the right project has also helped. The last time I attempted such a project I initially spent too much time   struggling with choosing a project that would fit the requirements of the class, and one that I could also use in real life.   I used too much energy trying to force a fit with something I really wanted to do and it took me a while to let it go and embrace something more appropriate that was ultimately much better.   I wrestled with details of both the topic and scope before settling into it and being able to move forward.   By comparison, the timing of this assignment coincided perfectly with what I needed in real world and so the initial struggles have been in simply defining the scope.     What should I include, what should be left out and how will the content be organized.

I have enjoyed both the Fink text and the article reviews.   They seem well paced with thinking about the lesson plans and assessments, leading me gently to my next ‘aha’ moment.   I am not thinking there will not be more struggles ahead, only that I will trustingly keep moving forward and not let them bog me down knowing there will be another ‘aha’ is just around the corner.

The concept map assignment was appreciated.   It is a technique I use regularly, but probably wouldn’t have stopped to do at the perfect moment.   The exercise provided the comfort of familiarity and a quick way to pull all the brainstormed content into a logical sequence.   The meeting this week with classmates was also at the perfect moment.   I was far enough along in my thinking to be able to lay out a well developed concept, but not too far to embrace the given feedback while still having lots of time to make positive changes to the plan.

I think that brings me up to date!   On a side note, I will admit that I am wading without the same kind of trust into my attempt at online gaming and entering the World of Warcraft.   I am overthinking the naming of my avatar, and pretty much everything else. After thinking about ,and writing this piece, I think I will have to just keep moving forward and trust in the process set forth by the game designers and see where it takes me.