2024 has arrived with a flurry of new resolutions, the turning over of a new leaf, and all the best intentions in the world. Decluttering our home, after nearly two years of enduring cancer treatments and recovery, has been the first priority. As a result, my husband Paul and I have been hard at work Fung Shui'ing our home into a new status quo, removing the accumulation so that my home office desktop and our family wall can regain prominence within their respective spaces.
With the holidays upon us, I thought it would be fun to introduce some levity with a riff off of an old classic song. However, there are a lot of syllables to try to match up. Especially when you match up Change by Design solutions to a department's challenges, all while trying to rhyme with words like birds, leaping or doves. Nonetheless, I hope you enjoy this small labor of love!
Dubbed "The Princeton of the South", Davidson was established in 1837 as a men's college by the Presbyterians of North Carolina. 136 years later, the first women's class was admitted into Davidson. I was a member of that class when I started my freshman post-secondary academic year. Over time, we became labeled the "Pioneers" because we were exploring the unknown together.
I recently achieved a career milestone: receiving the Florida State University Distinguished Alumni Award, from the College of Education, Health and Human Sciences. It was a deeply satisfying occasion, but it also made me call into question some of my own perceptions. For instance, I frequently perceive myself being positioned firmly in the middle of my career, with many things yet to accomplish. I'm a doer, an achiever, and constantly seeking continuous improvement.
Fall is here, and Halloween arrives just over a month from now. This enduring annual holiday that combines the surprising, the macabre, and the creative, is a fascinating social exercise in overcoming fears. Because in most circles of life, fear causes many of our ills as people, whether they are physical, emotional, psychological, or even spiritual. Fear stymies us in the present by robbing from our future, and leaves us feeling powerless. And fear cuts across all educational and socio-economic levels. But Halloween throws all that aside for one day, providing a familiar platform for non-traumatizing, temporary frights.
In last month's newsletter, I referenced an old belief I held about how being an instructional designer and business owner should mean I could pick up marketing quickly. But after I ran the math, I realized I have only spent about 320 hours doing it during the past year (the most I've done in my entire career), and probably about 700 hours overall. This misaligned perception reminded me a lot about the popular notion of expertise. The late Dr. Anders Ericsson, of Florida State University's Psychology Department, was a renowned scholar on expertise whose research, analysis and writing helped establish the popular notion that you must engage in deliberate practice on a skill set for a minimum of 10,000 hours to gain mastery. You may have heard about that idea before, somewhere in school, work or continuing education.
