Week 1. Is it easy to be grateful? Let's try!

Welcome to my journey in Instructional Design. There are 14 weeks ahead when I will be writing short reflections on what I learn as an instructional designer and share 3 things that I am grateful for. Every instructor needs more empathy. Here is my attempt to become more empathetic and attentive to the GOOD things that are around.

The semester has just started. I was so excited to be finally back to work! I still am but noticed that I am having a hard time memorizing things. It was never my problem. I could easily memorize any piece of information (sometimes even when it basically made no sense to me, e.g. formulas for my Physics classes at school:). So I decided to try the method I always recommended to my students to help them learn new vocabulary words faster. I started making note cards with the facts that I really want to remember to be able to revise them from time to time. This is the first thing that I am grateful for - I got three sets of petty index cards as a gift when I just arrived in America. My gratitude here is more about having so many wonderful people in my life who take care of me. Sometimes I ask myself if I even deserve to be blessed to have all this support. But they say "allow the universe to take care of you", right? However, I do find this phrase so cheesy and Instagram-like) But what if it really works?

Another thing I am definitely grateful for is the chance to have spent time with my friends here just playing board games. All of us are Fulbright students and none of us can actually have real fun) We tend to speak about work only. However, we spent 5 wonderful hours having nice tea with home-made pastry and played board games. It was just amazing to get carried away doing something nice and simple like that. It does not happen in the lives of nerds very often.

Lastly, I would like to thank life for the opportunity to learn something I have always been excited about. The more I read, the more I realize that Instructional Design is exactly what I wanted to study. And I don't really have to look at Cognitive Psychology Department courses as I found EXACTLY what gives me tick - learning how to design real things and what processes take place when the person learns. It was really interesting to look at the timeline of the ID theories. It does put a lot of structure to the knowledge of what socio-economic, political, and educational stimuli were prevalent in certain decades. Richard Culatta's presentation on TEDx is definitely worth watching. Understanding the concept of the "digital divide" between those who know how to utilize technology in order to reimagine learning and those who use technology to digitize learning is crucial for educators from all over the world in order to create more effective and efficient learning experiences. Let's see what the new week brings.