This may be more of a noodling post than anything, but as the focus of the last two weeks in our class is on professional development and career exploration, I’m going to take this opportunity to be mindful and think through some things I’ve come to learn about myself over the course of my educational and professional career. 16 years into this thing called adulting, I’ve still never learned exactly what work life balance is. This is not necessarily a negative thing in this context. What I’m referring to is that often, I enjoy what I’m working on so much that my innate curiosity takes over and I find much of my time being consumed by what I’m working on. I love learning new things, new technology, new tools, new teaching methods and exploring ways I can incorporate these things into my arsenal of educational weaponry (Gabrielli & Branson, 2012, p.270). I find it exciting because the pace at which these items become redundant and something else takes their place means that my investigations must continue (“Intentional Futures,” 2016, p. 380). I love helping people learn how to incorporate these resources into their instructional settings leading to successful transfer of knowledge.
In saying this and describing my excitement around these tools, I don’t know that I would ever describe this as my passion. I’ve never been a goal driven person, rather someone who loves doing things. I’ve always felt that when doors present themselves, it’s probably a good thing to at least attempt walking through them. This was reiterated in our Zoom session this past week with Dr. Gina Anderson, it was eye opening to see just one more avenue of where instructional design is needed and how had she not pointed that out, I would have never seen that side of the corporate door open.
You see, this is what I love about education, technology and instructional design, there are universal applications, nearly unending possibilities for us to apply our skills in a manner that will allow us to grow as professionals, but also to help others become more proficient in their own work as well.
References
Gabrielli, G. K., & Branson, R. K. (2012). Getting a job in business and industry. In R. A. Reiser & J. V. Dempsey (Eds.), Trends and issues in instructional design and technology (3rd ed.) (pp. 263-272). Boston, MA: Pearson Education, Inc.
Intentional Futures. (2016). Instructional design in higher education: A report on the role, workflow, and experience of instructional designers.
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