Learning from Failure | Using Delicious, Google Reader & falling in love with Google Trends OH MY!

I am not amused.  Try harder!

It's been another fabulous week - I've discovered that I failed in the most spectacular way possible on my last assignment (I use the fact that each of these assignments are worth 3% of my grade as salve to my haemorrhaging wounds).  Let's talk about what I learned from that (if you want to know what I did you can read this):

• I elaborated on the pain of this step in my assignment 2, which involved sharing that I had done something that Prof 1 asked me to.
• Prof 2 explained that doing this was a FUNDAMENTAL ERROR (apparently prof 1 and prof 2 don't share a brain...go figure) that had negatively impacted my grade. CRAP CRAP CRAP. 

Oh right, what I learned from that: 

• If you have two professors, they don't share a brain, communicate clearly what you are doing and WHY, otherwise your reader will think your actions are just plain stupid instead of well thought out.
• Technology sometimes sucks, while it is simultaneously being awesome (sort of like your beloved dog who barfs on the new rug...you love and hate it all at once). 
• Also, NEVER, ever try to import and OPML file into Delicious, it does not find them tasty.

If you made it past all that...I'm in love...

• Google trends, might be my new committed relationship, I discovered this tool in the midst of a Google Analytics course some time ago, but didn't have a context in which to use it. 
• It is beautiful, it tells you what people are talking about, when and what words they are using to do so.  On a practical level think about the word Environment and Environmental...to me they are virtually synonymous...not so mon frere, environment is used to describe everything from the Redwood forest to living arrangements to office space.  Environmental is largely used to describe environmental issues (except for graphic designers who sometimes refer to environmental graphics which are graphics that are used in buildings to create an "environment" I love weirdos).  
• Google analytics confirmed my hunch that Death (in red) wins the internet popularity contest over Justin Beiber (poor blue little Beiber...not so much fever anymore!)....YAH IT DOES: 

  

It's All About Me

This week continues to be a week where I am discovering what fires me up, it's certainly not grades...my boss asked me a few weeks back what my career goals were, and while I could answer her vaguely (not what I'm doing now/please help me learn new stuff/please let me do something that involves the things I'm actually good at!!!) this week has continued to open doors in my mind: 

• I LOVE the web.  From Delicious to Google Trends to Facebook to Twitter to whatever the next flavour of the week is.  Social media, how it works, it's weaknesses, what it's not good at, how to bridge it to the real world, how to use it to effect change, the power that it gives us, how it is changing every single minute, and we run this marathon trying to keep up with it.  
• I LOVE to learn.  My classmates and I have an epic Facebook group I set up after our residency ended.  It's the most amazing environment of collaborative learning I've ever experienced.  Each week it contains some level of venting and frustration (Masters degrees are hard, that's why they don't call them Happy-Happy-Giggle-Some-More degrees) but having peers to encourage and support through it is unbelievable, but it also involves celebrating...even when half the class fails, the ones that do well get cheered, the half that bombed commiserate and encourage each other, help figure out where we went off the rails.  Other weeks we plan in person meet ups so we can do the same stuff but in person.  I've learned as much or more from them as I have from my professors. This program makes me want to keep going, somehow I thought when I started that at the end of this program it would finally be that piece of paper that the world keeps reminding me I don't have.  Now that I'm in it, I absolutely dread the day that it's over.  I am quite certain I will actually sob uncontrollably.  I've attacked this program not caring about the grades, simply the learning, now I'm starting to panic because I think I'm going to want to keep going when it's done....I suspect that PhD's are a little harder to get into and I better buck up because if I do a repeat of last week's assignment for the rest of this adventure no University worth their salt will ever have me.

Perhaps most surprising is this last one...

• I LOVE to teach.  Teach is a little tiny word that encompasses all sorts of ideas for me:  share, enlighten, un-complicate, explain, help, encourage.  In this program I've felt a little in over my head at times, but nothing brings clarity to my own mind faster than teaching a concept to someone else.  When someone in our program is stuck, I jump at the opportunity to help them get unstuck, I wish I could say it was purely unselfish, the amount of pleasure and clarity I get really leaves me feeling like I've cheated them somehow.  Sometimes we figure it out together, sometimes I know the answer right away, but the thing I love most is being able to shed light or make something clear that was foggy or even invisible to them.  I've never done anything that makes me feel right in quite the way this does. 

Crap I want to teach something.  Right now.

Until next week kids...until next week....