Reflection #2

As my learning curve with the CLMOOC begins to look less like the first lift hill on a roller coaster (h1 in the image below),

and more like a reasonable geometric bell curve, I feel that I am making progress in harnessing the vast amount of information available to me. Still working on managing curation in a way that will be efficient during the school year, I forge ahead on Twitter chats, contemplating methodologies and content delivery changes. I spent a little more time lurking than commenting in my last couple of chats as I needed time to process, not simply respond. Now, as I reflect on my participation in the CLMOOC make cycles, I am experiencing a highly valuable emotion - discomfort.

I don't easily understand memes, the Week 2 Make. I don't watch television, rarely go to movies, don't have a Netflix account. Many of the cultural references are totally foreign to me. I feel my childhood rearing its head. I have always placed as far Introverted on the Myers-Briggs scale as is humanly possible. I recall the consultant brought in to evaluate my and my coworkers' results sharing with the group, "I have never seen a score like this!" I wasn't sure what to make of that comment. Since then, I have found the results to be right on target. Unfortunately, in our extroverted world, this has not been an advantage. Big props to Susan Cain for acknowledging and touting the value of thinker-makers. But here I am again, at a loss for understanding how to create a viable (and valuable?) meme. I'm not socially adept. Slapstick is not at all funny to me. So creating a meme that is meaningful to anyone but me is a tremendous challenge.

But I forged ahead, realizing that my emotional response: a bit of stomach twisting, self-denigration, grumbling about feeling out of the loop - is EXACTLY how every one of my students feels at one point or another during the year. What an excellent reminder for me to be compassionate, supportive, and empathetic. We cannot all excel at everything. I certainly will never excel at meme-creation. But I WILL excel at determination and exposing myself to possibilities. I'll even reward myself for diving in the deep end of the meme pool - by going to my studio and being alone. :)

Sources: http://www.physicsforums.com/showthread.php?t=517479, http://gettingcomfy.com/2013/07/07/life-quotes-on-solitude/