Roller Coaster

Yesterday I decided that it was best not to write in my blog.  I was a little emotional and thought I might say something I didn’t mean, which I surely would have, now that I am calm and feeling a little better (Thanks, Dan!).  Yesterday I got an email that my AERA proposal was rejected.  I was counting on this proposal to be accepted and I thought it would be cake, really.  I had reviewed other proposals for AERA and I thought in comparison that mine was pretty decent.  I know there are other factors that go into the decision-making, but I don’t really feel that I need to justify my failure.  I failed, it sucks.  Yesterday, I was more in the I failed, I will always be a failure, OMG what am I doing? mindset.  So, I took a break and read my blogs and forums on food and running and tried not to think about school too much (see this cool set of videos I found on healthy eating and this recipe for pumpkin pie bites).  But today, I am accepting the fact that this is only one conference and I can always apply next year.  There are other conferences and I will continue to press on.  This is a learning experience and I need to quit thinking that I should already be great at everything.  This almost identical paper got accepted at Bergamo, after all.

Reading for class this morning actually helped me to reconcile my downswing.  I was reading an article by Randall Bass* on how technology is changing the way we thinking of learning (learning rather than instruction).  He says, “We have to prioritize the experience with uncertainty” (p. 32).  This sounds a lot like Foucault’s limit-experience.  And, well, this uncertainty has been a huge part of my doctoral experience thus far.  I am always uncertain of myself and it’s scary, but it’s also necessary to grow.  I also really identified with an author Bass cites (Lee Shulman**) who says that students must feel “deeply engaged, highly visible and even vulnerable.”  They must also engage in “interactive, accountable talk” (p. 32).  Check, check, check, and check.  But what was really interesting to me was that Shulman also states that this risk-taking involves anxiety.  “Managing levels of anxiety is a major responsibility of the teacher, but is also a responsibility of the collective.  Because they all feel it, students must learn how to simultaneously challenge and support each other’s thinking.  In these settings, the presence of emotion, even a modicum of passion, is quite striking — as is its absence in other settings.  I would say that without a certain amount of anxiety and risk, there’s a limit to how much learning occurs.  No emotional investment, no intellectual or formational yield” (p. 33).  I’m glad I don’t have to feel bad about feeling emotional, but dang, do I have to learn so much?

*Bass, Randall (2009) Knowledge, expertise, and uncertainty in the new digital learning landscape.  Unpublished paper.

**Shulman, Lee (2005) Pedagogies of uncertainty. Liberal Education.  Spring 2005.