One of my classes has an online discussion board where students are required to post their experiences for that work week, share insights they've gained, or pose questions to the class. In a nutshell, it's like an online forum meets blog meets official debrief meets support group. The following paragraph below is what I posted last Sunday night, regarding my progress on the 15 page paper I have to submit this coming Sunday night. It was apt then, and it still feels apt now.
T-3 weeks until I become a master of something!
My desk at my summer fellowship is a reflection of my brain at the moment.
A huge mess.
On Wednesday, I was finally able to get some detailed feedback from my mentor regarding the outline I sent her last week. This turned out to be good thing and a bad thing.
The good thing was that her feedback about ways to make the white paper better was incredibly helpful.
The bad news was that I didn't do too well on the outline. I had spent last week crafting an outline that ended up being too "nitty gritty." It wasn't necessary for me to write the steps out, field guide style. She could see that the information was in there but she wanted it reframed into something more strategic than tactical.
T-3 weeks until I become a master of something!
My desk at my summer fellowship is a reflection of my brain at the moment.
A huge mess.
On Wednesday, I was finally able to get some detailed feedback from my mentor regarding the outline I sent her last week. This turned out to be good thing and a bad thing.
The good thing was that her feedback about ways to make the white paper better was incredibly helpful.
The bad news was that I didn't do too well on the outline. I had spent last week crafting an outline that ended up being too "nitty gritty." It wasn't necessary for me to write the steps out, field guide style. She could see that the information was in there but she wanted it reframed into something more strategic than tactical.
(Disclaimer: No babies were harmed in the production of this discussion post.
My ego on the other hand… just kidding!)
So back to the drawing board for me. I spent the rest of the week editing the outline and writing the draft. I tried to recruit some minions so that I may outsource some of the workload to them. They weren't very helpful.
But in all seriousness, based on my mentor's feedback, I ended up reframing it into a different, hopefully much better paper. Instead of getting into a crazy level of detail, I ended up following her suggestion of picking out a handful of challenges and then writing out the solutions that some experts have suggested. I supplemented these with examples so that there would be interesting anecdotes interspersed with the facts. It's a rough draft but I'm hoping that this is shaping up into something my sponsor company will like.
To the rest of the class, I'd like to say...
You can do it! :)
<3,
Tiffy
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