Autoethnography & Reflective Practice – Page 12

Multitasking, Meet the Flu

My multitasking met its match this week, when I finally left work a bit early on Friday with a case of the flu. I could not keep anything down, had a temperature of over 100, and with weakness so quick and intense that it took me nearly 20 minutes to struggle walking the 3 blocks from the train, it had all the symptoms of the flu. All the symptoms except it did not last the 3 to 5 days I remember.

I got the flu shot, and believe that is the reason why it was not as severe as it was in my early 20’s, when I lived alone and was unable to get out of bed for 5 days.

What is the lesson for multitasking? Well, quite frankly, it stops. All the plans I had for replying to my students’ blogs and forum posts? Stopped. Working with the class I am taking? Halted. Preparing to turn a peer-reviewed abstract into a full paper? No chance. Consulting? Forget it. Work, play, walking the dogs, reading? None of them. The flu, and anything unforeseen, ruins all of the overplanning we do. Multitasking stops completely. Even this posting itself is being done from my BlackBerry while recovering upstate by the fire with the snow gently falling outside.

The lesson? In finally being able to think a bit more clearly after being in a fog for days, I am wondering if multitasking and planning every last moment of available time leaves no time and energy for the unplanned.

Perhaps this is something I should, ironically, begin to plan for?

Expecations and Barack Obama

Tomorrow is the day when the 8 years of the second Bush administration finally comes to an end. The torture, elimination of civil rights and privacy, unfocused war on 2 fronts, banking and economic meltdown, increasing global climatic change, systematic elimination of ecological habitats, lack of international respect and pride, increase in reliance on imported oil and countless other products, increase in unemployment, explosion in debt, larger government than we have had in generations, and more disatrous social policies to name, will not be a quick or easy fix for the next administration.

Nevertheless, Barack Obama is more popular than any incoming president in years.

Moreover, there are almost impossibly high hopes for him to affect the very change he has promised.

Will Obama’s “Hope We Can Believe In” live up to expectations? Perhaps the question should instead be reveresed–how horrible if it cannot.

I wonder if the consensus is so dire that any improvement will be welcome, even if only a few minor steps? I wonder if things have gotten so bad that the American people will forgive Obama for taking longer on fixing the nation than we would with others, partly because he seems to be such a good person, partly because we have so far to climb, and partly because everything seems so broken that where else can we go but up?

This may be a singulalry unique political opportunity, one that we may not see again for some time. Whatever the case, my experience shows it is easier to get into debt than out of it, easier to put on weight than take it off, easier to become self-righteous and intollerant than to collaborate and focus on inclusion. I wonder if the same may be true for this large and complex country?

Barack, we do put our hope and trust in you. At this point, we are nearly out of any other options, and only hope it is not to late.

Then again, by the fact that I am freely writing and publishing this blog post, it seems hope may still be alive.

Learning from Impromptus

I watched the impromtus during our final class last night, and it appears they were well-received. I changed the format of how I handle these, as well as making the questions more open-ended and general than traditional business-related issues, and then used a Critical Incident Questionnaire to better understand the experience. There are a few things that stick out in my mind about this end-of-course activity:

Speaking on your feet is not scary with practice.
Seeing how things work well and then trying them out can be effective (such as asking the audience a question and getting their responses at the beginning to capture their attention).
Humor goes a long way to engaging and maintaining audience involvement.
Using a general communications model can be applicable to all communications situations.
Using a personal story on a topic with which the audience can directly relate is engaging.

I am pleased with the results, and like the way it seemed to end the course on a positive note by taking what we learned and applying it to a larger context (life). I hope my students found it as useful as well.

New Year’s Resolution—I Am Enough

Year after year I make New Year’s Resolutions for change. I have numbered them, listed them on paper, entered them into Outlook pop-ups, carried them in my pockets, put them around on Post-Its, told people about them, kept them close if they were personal, repeated them as a mantra, and other methods that have been forgotten just as the resolutions themselves have.

This year, I am planning something different. Rather than try for change, I am going to do just the opposite—accept what already is.

With my appreciation for Reflective Practice as a disciplinary methodology and my need to blog to help realize the results and the process itself, I am sharing my thinking on this resolution this year.

My resolution is a mantra I have tried out for the past few days and it feels right for me. It seems to fit in a way that I can understand and will try to incorporate into my life. In this regard, I understand I Am Enough as meaning that I will focus on appreciating what I have, already am, have accomplished, think, and feel. For some background, I at times think about what I am not or have not done or thought or felt, more than what I am, have done, thought, or felt. I tend to apologize (at least to myself) for my omissions and lack of, rather than appreciating and accepting what I already am all about. I tend to think I am not smart enough, not in shape enough, have not written enough, have not worked enough, relaxed enough, socialized enough, taught enough, traveled enough, and on and on.

I am resolving to accept what I have done, not perhaps as being the best or most or highest or grandest or what have you, but in a much simpler way: they are enough. This recalls a colleague years ago who was told by a professor, after slaving away on a paper that seemed to be going nowhere, that “sometimes good enough is good enough.” This is what I mean by I Am Enough.

Yes, this is a resolution that does involve some change I suppose, and changes in perspective can be as challenging as changing behaviors. However, I think this perspective is one that just feels like it may be the one that will help me move forward with my life by grounding me in my own very real experiences.

I hope my explanation does not appear as an apology, as it is not. I am explaining this to try to put words to what I have already decided. This is my resolution, and it is a good enough one as any.

Autoethnography Listserv Discussion Heats Up

I have not been blogging much recently, as I have been slammed with the simultaneous wrapping-up of two classes I am teaching: Principles and Practices of Online Course Creation and Instructional Design and Research Process and Methodology. I do have a lot of material to share and reflectively work out on my blog, but for now I have been refining my lessons, correcting papers, and helping students with projects / research / practice.

One thing I have been reading with great interest in the last day or so has been the increasingly heated discussion on the Autoethnography Listserv. While autoethnography is a favorite qualitative research method of mine, I have never seen such an interesting discussion that revolves around some incidents that appeared to happen during the NCA conference in San Diego, held at the Manchester Grand Hyatt that has recently been embroiled in the Proposition 8 controversy in California.

The experience seems especially interesting, given the conference’s theme of “unCONVENTIONal.” This is well worth some attention in the wider community of scholar-practitioners.