Order Out of Chaos

Another twelve-week term is about to begin.  This time around, I am taking “Assessment of Prior Learning” and “Software Tools”.  The latter should be fairly simple for me – I had debated applying for waiver to bypass the course, as I already have a comfortable familiarity with computers, Windows, Microsoft Office, and the Internet.  However, in light of the coursework I’m anticipating in my other class, and the fact that I could always stand to learn more about Office, I decided to take the class to provide a sense of balance for the winter term.

“Assessment of Prior Learning” is not a class, per se.  I’ll be working one-on-one with a mentor in the weeks ahead to gather and assess all of my relevant knowledge and skills gained through my life and work experiences.  By the end of the term, I’ll have developed a written portfolio summarizing and documenting this information, and will be submitting it for consideration for further college credits toward my degree in addition to the four credits awarded for the course.

I have no idea how much, if any, of my life experience will translate into college credit.  I’m currently feeling as though I am sitting in the middle of stacks of unsorted snapshots of my life with the goal of determining which are worthy of preservation in a scrapbook, of organizing them by date, of categorizing them by subject, and of completing said scrapbook as a cohesive final project all within twelve weeks.

In other words, I’m to make order out of chaos.

For a spatial, abstract thinker like me, this is not always easy.  It isn’t undoable, thankfully.  I sometimes have to employ specific strategies in order to adopt a linear mindset, but it can be done.  If nothing else, I’ll emerge on the other side of this course with four more credits toward my degree, a cohesive unified understanding of my working knowledge and skills, and an articulate narrative of who I am and where I’ve been in life to date.

Now if I could just learn to say in ten words what I tend to say in a hundred…

Done!

 

Three months have passed in a blink of an eye, though I suppose my family may have a slightly different perspective.  Since the fall term began back in September, I’ve spent more time writing and investing myself in schoolwork than I did through the entirety of my first year back.  Truth be told, I think I’ve written more in the last twelve weeks than I’ve written in the past twenty years.  Not all of it has been great; if anything, most of it has hovered somewhere between acceptably mediocre and acceptably okay. 

One of the key things I learned in the process, however, was how to kick my chronic perfectionism to the curb and to just enjoy the act of writing.  I adopted a shift in my thinking, and began to see writing as not necessarily a destination to be reached, but as a journey.  Many times, I was pleasantly surprised to find myself someplace unexpected, but often, the time spent writing was like taking a leisurely scenic drive on a lazy Sunday afternoon.  It didn’t matter if anybody else saw what I saw – it just mattered that I saw it.

Now my fall classes are over at last, and I have an entire month before I begin the next big step forward – the assessment of my prior learning.  That’s a whole other blog post in itself.

In the meantime, I’m not going to put away my proverbial pen, but I’m going to keep on writing, even if only for myself.  I still harbor a dream of becoming a Writer with a capital W, a dream that had languished in a coma for too many years, refusing to die, but also not showing many signs of life.  Since resuming college last year, those dreams have begun to stir, a twitching finger here, a fluttering eyelid there… but it’s only been within the last twelve weeks that they have awoken, rising from their slumber, and tentatively stretching their atrophied muscles.

"God gives us dreams a size too big so that we can grow in them. " ~ Unknown

I’m going to keep writing, to shake off the dust and to continue the ongoing process of perfecting my craft.  Most of all, I’m going to persevere in the knowledge that God, who is the Giver of all good gifts, will lead me along this journey to precisely where He intends for me to be.

I’m just enjoying the view along the way.