Decisions decisions…

Hello friends!

Wow am I ever HYPED to get started on this learning project (one of my assignments for my EDTC300 course @ the UofR)! But before I get posting about what I am doing and how I am doing it, I am going to go through my decision-making process because it has been really interesting for me to reflect over during these past few weeks.

At first, I was just excited to be mulling over ideas, however serious I was about them. Some of my initial ideas, not in any particular order, are as follows:

• learn to play the ukulele
• learn to run a half marathon
• learn to bake & decorate cakes
• learn to make earrings
• learn to crochet
• learn complex braids/braiding techniques
• learn to sew

To uke or not to uke? Photo Credit: Terry Chapman Flickr via Compfight cc

As I mulled over these ideas, the thought of being able to do any of these things really pumped me up! But as I thought about the logistics of these tasks and what it would actually look like to carry them through – I started to feel a little burdened by them. At the time I didn’t really know why because they were all such exciting things that I would be proud to accomplish! But there was something missing.

Eager for a spark of inspiration, I headed to the Padlet created from previous ECMP/EDTC classes to read their suggestions for taking EDTC300 and within those, seeking more specific advice about the learning project. Here are a few of their suggestions for the #learningproject that I really connected with:

• be yourself
• have fun
• pick a learning project that fits well into your daily life
• I also got a Tweet from Brooke Korchinski after I had asked for advice/ideas and she suggested, do something that when you think about it, you often think “I wish I could do that…”

but this is the one that hit me the most…

• pick a learning project that you enjoy

These suggestions were SO simple but were SO impactful for me. After reading these I completely changed my idea for the learning project. The morning that I read the suggestions, my current frontrunner was “learn to run a half marathon” and looking back at that makes me laugh so hard because guess what – I HATE RUNNING! hahahahaha (still laughing)

One of the only scenarios outside of sports where you’ll see me running… towards a carnival where I know there are corndogs 😉

>Photo Credit: Stuck in Customs Flickr via Compfight cc

I now realize that the options that I was choosing were all things that I loved the idea of being able to do but were not things that truly excited me. It’s interesting just thinking about my perspective on these ideas – as I have been reflecting I have been figuring out that I was thinking more about how “people that I like/admire know how to do _______, so maybe I should learn to _____” when I should have been thinking, “I would like to learn how to do _______ FOR ME – not for anyone else”. It was almost like I was seeking some kind of approval by trying to do things that other people may think are interesting instead of something that I would get excited about, regardless of whether anyone else even sees it.

SO without further ado!!!!!!!

My learning project is going to beeeeeeeee…. in my next blog post 😉 Stay tuned friends!!