Spoke & Hub

Here is a letter I wrote to my younger self as part of a writing-workshop-group-writing-together, and I saw two folks in the flesh yesterday. Here’s a chapter in my book connecting a previous chapter to one I have not yet posted here. Lost yet? I am taking the advice to share my work as it develops even if I am feeling reluctant to do so. Some things to keep in mind: the details below may or may not be true, this is a work in progress, and my main goal is to teach readers about the Ten Essentials by telling a story.

A Memoir.

Dear Younger Self,

Forgive yourself. 

The second thing, dear Little One. Know this. If I could live our life over again, I would.

There are few things I wish we could do differently. Nothing I would not do again.

Save for one. 

I would floss more. 

Recently I thought of you while I was reading Rebecca Solnit’s Field Guide to Getting Lost, she writes: 

Cut a chrysalis open and you will find a rotting caterpillar. What you will never find is that mythical creature, half caterpillar, half butterfly. A fit emblem of the human soul…

As I write to you, Younger Self, I think of you as this mythical creature. I wish I could say this will be the last time you feel this way. For now, take a deep breath and feel relieved that you did no harm to anyone other than yourself. How to tell you, Dear Young One, in some ways, darker times lurk around every corner. How to tell you things are better beyond your wildest dreams? How to express gratitude for all of the things you are discovering?

Let me start by reminiscing about the first time you sought out adventures in the forest. Good job. You will need these mountains more than ever in the future, so congratulate yourself for figuring out how to save your sanity so early in life. When I think of you and who you are on the cusp of twenty, you are busy meeting the mountains and falling in love with its backcountry.

Breathe deep and enjoy this moment.

Remember the smell of loamy soil. Hold the crisp pine scent of trees in your heart. These trees may be lost one day. Close your eyes and savor the scent of being on the trail. Mountains will become a temple to your middle-aged soul. When you first discover the joys of a trail, it is a complete miracle that nobody will see you as being way out of your league and a danger to your personal safety. Truly! You trick everyone into thinking you knew exactly what you were doing. Nice work, by the way. Turns out this is a life-long skill you will continue to hone well into middle-age.

Talk a good game, sister; it’s soul-craft. 

On your first extended trip, you had a good backpack. Spendy-looking boots you found on sale. A smile that attracted a surfer boy from California who offered to share his tent. A wit that appealed to a granola girl from Vermont who needed a partner-in-crime. You looked the part. Won the role. Joined the cast of delinquents who like a party in the woods. 

What I’m writing to you, Young One, is what I wish I could have told you then. Our life lessons, if you will, recorded here from the perspective of somebody who got to choose her own adventure. This is all the advice from lessons learned from the years we will affectionately come to call our 20s and 30s. Don’t worry, we don’t become a sad woman who pines for the past with regrets. We could have just been, shall I say, a bit more aware.

Relish in the fact that you are the last generation to enjoy unfettered time in the woods. No adult in your life tried to give you any structure when you were a kid playing outside. Your independent stubborn spirit never got in the way of your education. If I could whisper a few things in your ear, other than remembering to floss every day, here’s what I’d say. 

Read up on the Ten Essentials. 

This classic list of materials will help keep you safe in the backcountry instead of relying on extraordinary good luck. Be aware that you’re not exercising good judgment when you make a decision with the phrase:

Fuck those dudes, I’ll show them…

Focus, instead, on learning to dare yourself. 

Public libraries exist, for instance, I dare you to read up on details you need to survive in the mountains. Maybe exercise your library card a bit more instead of doing bong hits in the morning while lusting over maps.

Reading, it turns out, is incredibly helpful and much more productive than daydreaming of new places to go. You will suffer longer than necessary as you become a backpacker. Your fancy-ass expensive degrees will teach you the terminology to describe what you need: motivated self-directed informal education. 

Spoiler alert! You somehow figure out how to graduate from college. No shit.

It’s also a great idea to remember to turn on some lights while you look at those maps, by the way, you may be ruining your eyesight.

Speaking of maps. 

Always remember to pack the map you purchased. Know where your trip takes you. Yes.

Accept this obsession. Your best dreams swirl with topographic lines. 

Pay attention to where the sun sets in the sky.

Gift yourself at dusk and slow down since you will sleep and miss most sunrises until you are much older. Not knowing how to find the four directions the moment you walk out of your tent is already starting the day off with a struggle. And really, let’s be honest. Not getting stoned first thing in the morning would be really helpful. Wait, I’ve already told you that. See? What they say about damaging your short-term memory may be true, Younger Self.

It may also be menopause.

Here’s what I know: the cliché of being concerned with the journey and not the destination feels like bullshit when it is raining in sheets and you’ve lost the trail. Never doubt that those who wander do indeed get very lost. Your goal is to go there and back again on the trail. Easy. You don’t want to end up on the news.

Pay attention to forks in the trail. Look up. Look around.  

A compass really helps. Invest in a cheap one. Take a minute to learn which way is west on every new trail. Trust me. Follow the advice of “Go West, Young Woman.”

Know when it is time to walk.

And you’ll struggle with this next tip for life, I’m afraid, but try to remember sunglasses and sunscreen, especially livin in the PNW. After The Great Eye Infection of 2005, you must try to always remember sunglasses and eye drops in your first aid kit. The freckles you have are more from getting shit-faced drunk at outdoor concert festivals than hiking anyway. Want to know an easy way to remember which direction is west? Look north, then look down at the freckles on your left shoulder; they are bigger than those on your (stage-right) shoulder. Wait. Who am I kidding? Admit that you like how you look with a tan and sunscreen makes your face breakout.

Start wearing a hat earlier in life. Buy a cute hat. Don’t borrow them from boyfriends, who are weirdly possessive about their hats. And they get super-pissed when you lose said hat. Remember those eye drops. Always. You can use them to hide the fact that you enjoy getting stoned in the morning for a lot longer than you think.

Don’t forget the extra clothing. Spend money on the best sweat-wicking stuff you can afford. The Army/Navy clothes, albeit fashionably edgy in the 1990s, are really fucking heavy. I’m sorry to report those clothes are made for soldiers to suffer. Wool is scratchy. Makes you bitchy. Own up and buy the obnoxious pink colors of wickable fabrics when they are on sale. Claim that you are wearing all the shrinked and pinked gear as style.

Gear, I am pleased to report, both in terms of clothing and equipment, gets significantly better over the years. It will blow your mind how good it gets. How unbelievably expensive it becomes. If you are to forget any item of clothing, do not let it be extra socks. Never hang your bra outside to dry while you’re, um, hanging out with a guy in a tent.

Deer like salt. 

The guy in the tent will not mind that you have fewer clothes, but you will. Hiking with a duct-taped sports bra is a great story that gets you a lot of laughs. It does, however, suck the joy out of many miles of beautiful trails in northwest Montana.

Praise you for being one of the first people among your friends to buy a headlamp!

You turned so many people on to those strappy contraptions, it’s probably a shame you did not have stock in the company. Be sure to always pack that headlamp. You’ll need extra batteries. You like to read late into the night once you get over the newness of that guy sharing your tent. You usually fall asleep with your headlamp on because you’re tired, sunburnt, and stoned. And you hate the dark. Be sure to invest in the best illumination you can afford. Cheap ones do just fine, but they break.

True of most gear, really.

I’m delighted to tell you that you’ll find two headlamps while you’re bike commuting in Portland, Oregon. Enjoy giving headlamps away when you upgrade.

Be sure to sleep under the stars without a tent as long as you love to.

There will come a time when you do not want the dude in your tent. You’ll prefer him waiting for you at home. Like not anywhere close to where you are backpacking. It’s okay to take time to figure that out. Another hard truth is that most dudes in your life won’t be worried about where you are. It’s nothing personal or selfish; they just live their own lives. The magic of middle-age, My Lovely, you accept this about love after you find The Right One. 

You will wear 100 headlamps and still not see The Wrong Ones. It’s your cross to bear.

First-aid supplies. Bring those. Always. 

Don’t ever rely on somebody else. Love many, trust few, and paddle your own fucking canoe. All that.

Aim to bring everything you need to keep your spirits up while being mindful of weight.

Blister first-aid will keep The Bitchy Monster quiet and keep everyone happier around you. Have itch cream to silence bug bites. Ibuprofen for when you get a headache. Duct-tape. Always duct-tape. Burn cream. Floss. Keep that first-aid baggy clean. Make sure you have a Cool Rag which will rescue you for years. Teach others about the importance of The Cool Rag. It’s your freak flag of hygiene and so much more. The Cool Wrag is a bandana that you expressly use for dipping into creeks and streams to keep you cooler on hard climbs or on hot days. You can tie it around your head, your neck, your wrists, or drape it across your shoulders. It’s really helpful to keep the swelling of your hands down which inevitably happens during a long hike until you purchase hiking poles. You somehow hold on to the same Cool Rag for close to 30 years.

Now that we discussed how to stay cool, remember your firestarter. Grab some lint from the dryer before you leave just to be on the safe-side to start a fire. Burn the trash that you can’t recycle. Check!

Always buy cheap lighters. Having a lighter isn’t an issue, stony. You might, however, be with a friend who steals lighters so she has three of them in her pocket and and then somehow loses them all.

Leave no trace.   

Matches. Seems redundant on the list, really. See vague reference above about stoner girlfriends who steal lighters. Let me add another lesson learned here while we’re on the topic of fire and warmth.

Expensive waterproof matches? Worth the investment for emergencies. Weather events. Make sure you bring extra rolling papers. You always run out. One drip drop of rain ruins the glue on an entire pack. Soggy rolling papers dampen spirits on trips. Trust your Future Self here, and pack all important items in extra plastic baggies. Take inventory of your shit before you get stoned. Where was I?

A Knife. Right. 

It will take you years to afford a good one and then you’ll lose it. And that’s okay.

In fact, you will eventually cut back significantly on pot smoking, and you’ll free up some of your budget to afford a pretty okay multi-tool. The guys you share a tent with usually have one. Or you hike with somebody who has a better tool than you.

A cheap Swiss-Army knife will always work. You lose the splinter-tweezers things immediately. They are quite handy to use as a roach clip. Keep that part of the knife with your weed. Don’t try to put it back into the slot. It just becomes this really hard puzzle to solve that makes me embarrassed for you.

Honestly, those guys with the fancy knives? You don’t need them either. 

Hiking with a best girlfriend is way better. She will want to talk about your book and there is no worrying about her intentions in the tent. She only wants to sleep. She will apologize for her body odor instead of thinking it’s her god-given right to stink up the space. Before you both fall asleep she will remind you to bring your bra in the tent.

Everything becomes easier. Getting older is magic.

Extra food. Yes.

Or at least enough food. If you can afford it, this is always your best essential. When The Hunger visits; it makes you miserable. You’re small but you can eat like a large human; you burn a lot of calories hiking. Ration your food before you get stoned. That’s probably the most important lesson. The most important essential, really. Buy extra ramen. You can carry light noodles as emergency food if you run out of fuel for your camp stove. Crunchy dry noodles are better than hiking hungry.

Don’t be afraid to flirt with bearded strangers who have food to share. Make sure he does not expect to end up in your tent. Keep in mind that when you do this, there will be consequences with pissing off the Boyfriend-with-the-Good-Knife who does not score any food from said Sexy Snack Stranger. In fact, the stranger ignores him as he pours homemade jerky into your cupped hands as you scoot close enough to hear him smell you. The benefit of being able to reminisce about the kindness of this stranger, outweighs the cost of the weeklong argument with Backpacking Boyfriend. Totally worth it. Every time you eat spicy homemade jerky, you’ll think of this Sexy Snack Stranger, like Proust’s madeleine. You don’t know what that means yet but you will.

A hot drink at the end of the day is a must. 

Abundant drinking water is key. Moving on.

Hiking in areas where water is scarce is to suffer. Rationing water is simply not fun. You get terrible headaches from dehydration. You suffer in the desert. Stay north.

And there is an eleventh essential: Just for those who menstruate. 

I could not find a single Ten Essential list with a mention of the menses. Seems off. Hiking on a full moon affords you extra light in the evening sky, but it also means you may be taking Aunt Flow into the woods with you. I suppose it could be classified under first aid, but it is an omission in most guide books.

Carry your own supplies for bleeding. You can burn most of them if you run out of fire starter. Menstrual cycle surprises are fodder for your friends to make vicious jokes about your repurposing of the gauze in the first aid supplies, but it is no fun for you.

What you can not burn, you have to hike out. But that may be story for another time.

Some things do, in fact, get better, I promise. Better than you can dream possible.

Keep enjoying this one wild wonderful life,

Middle-aged Me.

We are in the process of doing some home improvements that we have put off for five years. When we sat down with our priorities and budgets five years ago, we decided to buy bikes and live with gnarly carpets (you can buy rugs to cover stains), the horrid light yellow paint on the walls (we call it Sun Faded Cat Piss), the uncomfortable futon we’ve had since 2003 (our dog loved it), and the cheap blinds (rental unit level quality). Every time we have had a bit of extra money, we decided to go places rather than invest in home improvements. Then the pandemic hit, and we spent almost a year with those floors, those walls, and the blinds, and whenever I had regrets, I went out to the garage and looked at our bikes to remind myself we’re doing okay in life. 

Before we have folks to do this flooring work, I have decided to see this as an opportunity to cull through my belongings. My husband and I both moved out west (separately) in our twenties with what we could fit in a car, and when we moved in together, we chose the best of anything we had as duplicates. He and I have moved close to a dozen times in the twenty years we’ve been together, so we’ve pared down our belongings. Books and bikes take up the most space, and we’ve always seen it as worthwhile to keep some possessions. If you look at our library and if you know us individually, you can easily tell which books belong to whom. Only he and I know which books we’ve both read (we have different tastes). As we have moved, we have also accepted that there are some things that we will never part with as individuals. One heated exchange is all it took for me to accept moving things of his, and he mine. 

For instance, after our third time moving together, I peeked into a box and found this black leather jacket covered in art that I’ve never seen him wear and I suggested that he part with it.

“I’ve never even seen you wear this, and what’s all of this other crap in this box? It’s gotta go to Goodwill, yo.” I had thought he was the only offender of keeping unnecessary things, but he came back swinging with the snark.

“Oh, you mean like that heavy-ass sewing machine you make me carry. I’ve never seen you fire that thing up.” 

He had a point. I loved that machine. It was from my life before him. It was the only thing left from a certain era, a time that feels like it never happened. Maybe he felt the same way about his jacket. Space in the U-Haul was precious real estate. We parted with a few kitchen gadgets and he kept the relic of his punk rock youth. I blew him a kiss when he carried the machine up three flights of stairs, and he extended his middle-finger with a smile in his eyes. That was the last time we had that discussion. 

Now that we are faced with moving all of our possessions to put in new floors, I am motivated to streamline my things mainly because of a short story by Ann Patchett, whom I love with all my writerly heart. In “How to Practice,” she writes about helping her friend clean out an apartment of her recently deceased father. Both Ann and her friend do not have children like me and my husband.

Here’s the section that gave me pause: 

Over the years, we had borne witness to every phase of his personal style: Kent as sea captain (navy peacoat, beard, pipe), Kent as the lost child of Studio 54 (purple), Kent as Gordon Gekko (Armani suits, cufflinks, tie bar), Kent as Jane Fonda (tracksuits, matching trainers), Kent as urban cowboy (fifteen pairs of boots, custom-made), and finally, his last iteration, which had, in fact, underlain all previous iterations, Kent as cosmic monk (loose cotton shirts, cotton drawstring pants—he’d put on weight).

I love this description for two reasons: We learn so much about this man both by popular references and the way that she uses parentheses. Rather than telling a story within a story, she gives us details about Kent’s life in between those parentheses. I used to teach my students that if you are going to add parenthetical information, you should read it aloud and if it doesn’t make sense like you’re whispering an aside, it doesn’t work (when in doubt, leave it out). 

Explicitly this is a story that teaches readers to think about their things and what might happen when you die, what might happen if you do not have children to clean out your closets. It’s also about what this man brought into his life as he aged and changed through different phases.

Implicitly this story is about so much more, and I thought about how that sewing machine (for me) was the first time I had extra money to buy something I wanted as a working adult. That leather jacket signifies something intangible to my husband, I’m sure. My mind then wondered some more.

When I think about stories of intangible and tangible things, I see the cover of The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien. If you have not read this book, click away from this bloggy drivel, and treat yourself to an incredible book about the Vietnam War.

Here’s one of my favorite passages: 

They carried all the emotional baggage of men who might die. Grief, terror, love, longing-these were intangibles, but the intangibles had their own mass and specific gravity, they had tangible weight. They carried shameful memories. They carried the common secret of cowardice barely restrained, the instinct to run or freeze or hide, and in many respects this was the heaviest burden of all, for it could never be put down, it required perfect balance and perfect posture. They carried their reputations…men killed and died because they were embarrassed not to.

We have two copies of this book, by the way, we read it as graduate students and loved it. I know his copy by the handwriting in the margins, it’s a given we’ll keep both copies. The day my book arrived in the mail 22 years ago, I cracked it open and read the whole thing in one sitting. I canceled the plans I had that night, ate cheese and crackers for dinner and read O’Brien’s masterpiece, a banned book. I had heard both of my parents tell stories about the Vietnam era, and I’ve seen all of the movies and documentaries, but that book took me inside the mind of an American soldier, inside the complexities of that war. He taught me the weight of intangible things (like memories) can be heavier than any real thing (like carrying your friend’s dead body). 

Memories are heavy.

When I bought that sewing machine, I justified the purchase because I knew I could always sell it if I really needed the money in the future. I’ve learned from my middle-class friends, they didn’t have to think this way about their possessions. For those of us who survived childhood with parents who lost jobs and the economic destruction that ensues, it is hard to not think this way even if you have moved into a new tax bracket yourself. That sewing machine signifies a sort of success for me (I never got desperate enough to sell it). I’ve never asked my husband what that jacket means to him, but I will carry that box should we move again (some stories are personal, it is also lighter than my sewing machine).

As I started to go through the things I have accumulated since we moved here five years ago, I cut the tape on a box that I have moved but have not opened in probably ten years (if I’m honest, the mister has probably carried this one, it’s really fucking heavy). I have letters from people who are (sadly) no longer in my life, my high school yearbooks, really old family photos, scrapbooks, and my high school diary. I spent some time putting a few photos on the Insta writing captions (Insta is all about self-entertainment). When I cracked open my yearbook and a weaving project from my senior art class fell out. I had forgotten that we done weaving in that class! 

Memories of my art teacher came flooding back as I touched the fibers and marveled at how good it was (humblebrag). I remembered the art teacher telling me my design was ambitious and that I may not be able to make it work, but she told me to experiment and try. Like a good art teacher, she had us sketch and make a plan before we started the actual weaving. I don’t remember my grade nor do I remember what anyone else made, but I remembered loving the feel of the loom, how I obsessed about the colors of the yarn, and that class was one of my favorites because I got to talk with my friends as we made things (a precursor to how my best friendships have matured and endured). 

As I turned the 4×12 inch weave over to see the right-side and the wrong-side, I now see how my plan did not work in reality (some of the rows do not connect, there are holes where there should not be). I am amazed by the teacher’s willingness to let me make those mistakes (she had to have known), and I think I can fix them now.

In this small artifact that has survived 30 years tucked into a yearbook, I see my 18 year old self choosing colors I still love to this day (greens, purples, golds, blues) and a design of a sun and a moon (always a hippy at heart). Until recently, that was my one and only art class. My heart aches for students who do not get to take classes like this or for kids who lose time in art class to do active shooter drills. I know for a fact there are fewer art teachers. 

I also looked at the teacher section of my yearbook, and I was amazed at how many of my teachers had graduate degrees from really good schools. Morehouse, NYU, Spelman, Syracuse, Boston College, and other regional publics from the southeast, I was so very lucky to land in that public school in Atlanta, Georgia though I am not sure I thought that at the time.

I looked at the photo of my history teacher (a Morehouse alum) who played “Fight Power” by Public Enemy during a lecture, and he stopped the cassette tape (I’m old) as Chuck D was mid-stream:

Elvis was a hero to most

But he never meant shit to me you see

Straight up racist that sucker was

Simple and plain

Mother fuck him and John Wayne

He asked us why Flava Flav was so mad at Elvis and John Wayne. I remember the entire class cracking up. We were freaked out that our teacher even knew this music (he was probably 26, ancient to teenagers). In my suburban Atlanta classroom, we loved that music and I remember us laughing at how hip our teacher was (he dug Public Enemy like us!)

I have never forgotten the power of music for what we call teachable moments. I don’t think (and I deeply fear) that a teacher could not do this today, and every time I hear that song, I think of him and what he taught me about poetic explication (though I would not have known to call it that).  

Can you imagine his lesson plan? Today we will discuss American history, cultural appropriation, and race relations as represented in It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back. Students will discuss key poetic lines from William Jonathan Drayton Jr. and Carlton Douglas Ridenhour. 

Maybe he did not write a lesson plan at all and that’s how it worked (I remember him shutting the door before he pressed play on the boom box). 

So okay, I’m digressing (as usual). 

Here’s the thing.

I want to express gratitude to one of my dearest friends (a textile artist) who bought me Ann Patchett’s new book and had her sign it for me in her bookstore as I housesat. As I fell deeper in love with her home and her pets. As I tried to write this book of mine. As I tried to essay and nothing came. As I tried to remember the hope that you can be an author who owns a bookstore in 2022.

Patchett’s message has helped me through some really dark months, and she has helped me see that I am at my best when I essay (when I attempt, when I try). 

I’ll leave you with her words from (a tear-stained) page 4 and 5: 

…I could watch myself grappling with the same themes in my writing and in my life: what I needed, whom I loved, what I could let go, and how much energy the letting go would take. Again and again I was asking what matters most in this precarious and precious life. 

As for death, I have remained lucky. Its indifference has never waned, though surely it will circle back for me later. Death always thinks us of eventually. The trick is to find joy in the interim, and make good use of days we have.

Amen, Ann. (And fight The Power).

The French have a saying that I quite love. Plus ça çhange plus c’est la même chose. When I hear a French speaker say these words, I feel like I am witnessing a benediction, a resignation, an acceptance of all the horrors. A full use of the body to emote words.

The more things change, the more they stay the same.

Sigh. This introduction applies to so many things and thoughts right now, but here goes. A post I’ve been working on for a few months, and I want to post this so I can think about my book this weekend. Bless the heart who told me my bloggy is better when I do not write about educational technology. I have, however, not written here very much, but the following has been on mind as a winter research question.

Last fall, I decided I would carve out some time to learn something new while I had a glorious sabbatical month. Keep in mind I spent most of my time walking in the woods watching the winter duke it out with autumn. Glorious. Just magical that sabbatical of mine.

At the time, I kept seeing the term “upskilling” along with a lot of hand-wringing about the Great Resignation. Professional development while you are working a job in this era? The odds are not in your favor. Nobody cares about your skills until they need them, so if you like to learn for the sake of learning you may have to make that time happen on your own.

Usually professional development, let’s be honest, rewards you with more work. I am a glass-half-full kind of girl, but I also know I don’t own the glass and the water may need filtering.

And The Great Resignation, mind you, is a bit like what Grunge is to music genres. A media concoction to describe a certain time. Meaningless, subjective, and crafted by people who are looking to classify and market things for you to buy. Plus ça çhange plus c’est la même chose.

But I’d like to take a closer look at the upskilling–it sounds like something a mime does with an invisible hula hoop. This improvement of your skills has been around for a long time but you may know it as professional development or professional learning, training, organizational development, and the like. All of these words and phrases summarize learning at work and it costs somebody money or time.

When an offer to take classes for free for a month hit my personal inbox, I decided to give it a shot.

What did I learn from the 2022 mighty MooC that rhymes with the title of this blog? 

Let me start with some questions I had when I signed up.

Could I learn a job skill while not taking a class from a person? I am an okay watercolor painter and fair-to-middling knitter thanks to YouTube, but could I take this focus and use it towards something that justifies a paycheck? Can you really change your career with these courses? These programs? Is this how competency-based education finally finds its way to remediation, developmental level, or pre-college level work?

Could the MOOC course design facilitate students through an upskilling?

I had a few other questions: Why take one of these classes and not one from a university or community college? What is happening with corporations who are paying for their employees to learn from professional development services? What is a MOOC-like learning experience for people who do not remember the first wave of MOOCs? More importantly, are these courses similar to correspondence courses in ye ol’ days o’ distance learning?

If you remove the personal learning network focus of a traditional MOOC (to me), what then is the actual “course?”

What does a badge look like, who hosts it, and who the fuck cares? What happens at the end of this experience? Do people really get jobs? And selfishly, how little time could I devote to this and still pass?

The last question is really the honest truth. Instructional design boiled down.

Let me repeat this: 

How little time could I devote to an upskilling and still learn something meaningful? 

Here’s the thing.

The way that the course is designed, and the care in the tone of the feedback–even within all of automation–I could sense real people behind the design.

There is a story in the course.

Let’s say you’re tasked as an employee with upskilling–this word also reminds me of keeping a balloon in the air as it is floating away.

With an upskilling, students have a few choices.

1] You can pay for an expensive certification from an organization that has trademarks, certifications, and acronyms galore.

2] You can sign up for a course at your local community college.

3] You can apply to your local university.

or 4] you can sign up for the 2022 mighty MOOC.

You may not really understand what you’re aiming to become because you have no idea what a project manager is, how it differs from a program manager, but you see tons of jobs asking for these skills.

You also have a fifth choice as a student. As a learner. That’s to not to go at all.

And that is deeply troubling to me; people choosing not to pursue an education. People accepting that plus ça çhange plus c’est la même chose.

There is always hope, I want to say. Just like Bansky painted. Look again at the image if you missed it.

When I considered my choices as a student, I chose the shortest path: the 2022 mighty MOOC. They promised I could move as quickly or as slowly as I wanted, and they would charge me a lot less than what I would pay at the university or community college, and much less from the ™ organization.

For the price of 10 fancy coffees, I could earn a certificate or badge to decorate my LinkedIn profile under licenses and certifications.

Here are some other things I learned in the upskilling. Sounds like something in a horror film.

I learned the jargon and vocabulary of another field. I still think that a liberal arts education gives you the knowledge, skills, and abilities to earn a paycheck, friends. And frankly none of us are safe from automation, streamlining, lean leadership, and all of the other undoings of life as we know it. I will die on this hill.

I also loved being in a class and not having to deal with other people. A memoir.

I have a PLN, and for this I am fortunate, so to be able to listen to videos while I sketched and took notes was a real luxury. I did not participate in any of the networking opportunities and I clicked past all of the discussions.

The network is there if student want it, and I loved having the choice to ignore it. To me, this is the key function of all programs that are targeted to adult learners. You have to make it very clear what is optional.

I thought some of the assignments were pretty clever. I like a good story, and they kept a constant narrative about a single company. Clever scaffolding. Kept me interested. I was able to apply what I already know from academic leadership and whatever it is I do now, and I laughed outloud every time they would cite a “business leader’s theory.” Most of the time, it was just Aristotle, Freud, and/or some early capitalist who actually wrote about these concepts first.

I took a few quizzes over again just to see how they reworded questions. And kudos to you, question writers, that shit’s an art that we like to pretend is a science. It is really hard to write a multiple choice question that actually teaches people. All data-driven revisions are a leap of faith that you are improving a course. Or you are quite possibly making the learning experience worse. This I know.

Something else interesting to note is that this is the first time I have taken a class with so many multiple-choice questions. Truly! I have spent plenty of time writing questions for assessments, and I have written them for so many classes I’ve lost count in the last decade, but it was not my first mode of assessment as a teacher.

With this certification sequence, I made a deal with myself that I would not spend more time trying to earn “an A” and I would just roll with my first attempt at any assessed work. A few times, though, I challenged the robot. I was like, “This question sucks, and the distractor is not entirely wrong.” You can loose hours of your life with these thoughts, and I don’t think the majority of students care.

Writing a good wrong answer is so much harder than writing the correct answer. A Memoir.

I really liked assignments where they made me choose the best response in a conversation. As a learner, I hate simulations where people role play in person. Even with skilled actors, it always seems forced. 

Education classes, in particular, utilize simulations, role playing by acting out scenarios, with the hope that it helps in real life. It may for some, but for me as a student, I always felt like it was a shitty theatre class and a day off for the teacher. You never really know what you’ll say until there in the moment.

In the 2022 mighty MOOC, my friends, they had you drag and drop what you would say in a scenario, and they told you if you were right or wrong and why. If only life worked that way!

I often chose the wrong answer just to see why it was wrong. Nerd alert, I know. Those drags and drops were very helpful to learn processes, when to use vocabulary in different scenarios, and what the job might look like should you get hired. Quite helpful, really. Very interesting conversations where the content directly connects to what you might face in the workplace. You never know.

I also half-assed all of the peer response assignments. True confession.

I never read the assignments, I just completed the work based on the rubric.

The teacher in me dies a few deaths with this confession, but holygod did it save me time.

A few times, I got a 100% when I should have failed. The few times I did get dinged for incomplete shitty work, I felt bad for the person who graded it. The last class, the capstone, was a bit of a struggle because they had so many peer response assignments. I was ready for the upskilling to end at that point. Maybe it’s home improvement word, upskilling. We did an upskilling on the kitchen this weekend and it was more than we bargained for time-wise.

Did I leave the six class sequence with a portfolio of work?

No, but you could.

Slight missed opportunity for me, but probably not. I liked the business plan throughout the course, but it was tough to translate the work without your own imaginary business or project.

Did I leave the class understanding the major learning outcomes? Yes, and I have access to templates, vocabulary, and resources that I could use again if I needed to. Mostly it reinforced whatever I already know about this work. Not a total loss.

Would I do it again? Not sure. 

When I concluded the program they offered me a coupon to the fancy ™ program. It was like an upskilling coupon to celebrate my graduation. That could really be appealing to some people, I suppose. If the 2022 mighty MOOC leaves you at the door of a real certification at a discount, chances are you may do better.

Do I understand the “upskill” zeitgeist better now?

Dunno. 

I’m left with more questions than answers, so I’ll close by telling that I read every vocabulary list because I love words. Those were the best part of the six months I came and went with this course.

Here’s the best definition of the word “uncertainty” that I’ve seen in a business course or frankly about life as we know it. (emphasis mine).

Uncertainty: a lack of predictability or high potential for surprise.