My time with the Learning Agency and with the LDT program at CU Denver will come to a close in just a few short weeks. It's a surreal feeling to say goodbye to a program that has been a part of my life for two years, but a good feeling nonetheless. I'll never stop learning, of course, but I'm excited to leave the title of "student" behind and assume the role of "instructional designer," if not by name, then by some other metric. And I'm feeling as prepared as could be thanks in no small part to the Learning Agency!
Before starting my LDT degree, my only daily, long-term commitment was to my 8-5 job. All my responsibilities and tasks were directly connected to my corporate role. I found managing my calendar and checklists easy enough; they were tied into what I did every day and my social and personal commitments were easy enough to keep track of with an annotated wall calendar. I never would have considered that I had time management issues.
Once I left the 8-5 job to become a full-time student and faculty member, though, I began to see issues with my time management. It was no longer a matter of thinking of things as "work," "play," and "adulting." All of a sudden I had a lot more to manage and way less structure with which to manage it. I was taking 6 credit hours' worth of classes, teaching another 9 credit hours, and working as a graduate assistant on top of all that. Saying yes to each opportunity seemed like a no-brainer. Of course I want to teach as many classes at CU as I can, it means I get a chance to put into practice what I've learned in the LDT program! Sure, I'll take that extra class - it will probably serve my learning design prospects in the long run. I have to take on that grad assistant role, I need to pay my bills!
On its face, the combination of each of those responsibilities came out to the equivalent of a 40-50 hour work week. That seemed manageable. But the issue with each of those responsibilities was that there was no set time for them, no 8-5 scheduling or universal deadlines or even mutual locations. I found myself on long mid-day commutes between the Auraria library and a teaching gig up in Boulder, or trying to decide whether I should schedule a dentist appointment during the day and just leave my grad assistant responsibilities for the evening. "Locking in" on a series of tasks was something I'd been good at with corporate, but evaded me when the tasks and stakeholders were so different. And making my own schedule and routine was a futile effort - every day was different from the last.
When I selected the Learning Agency as a course last summer, I figured it would be an opportunity to add some scheduling consistency to my days. If I was working with a client, perhaps I'd be on their schedule, and could build my responsibilities around the client's needs and timeline.
What I didn't know about working with an Agency is that it's got a lot of the same freedoms and limitations as what I'd already inadvertently built for myself. Working with various clients on different, unrelated projects meant that a consistent schedule and routine was out of the question. As soon as I finished one project, that schedule would become moot and I'd need to adjust my expectations. This was especially the case with my final Learning Agency project, where I essentially acted as Lead Designer in the redesign of an undergraduate course on CU's Canvas site. Simply put, I had too much freedom!
But there was one small difference in how the Agency ran things versus how I'd been running them for myself which ended up being hugely helpful: logging hours. It almost sounds too simple a strategy to be true, but it really did help. I figured out that by mapping the actual hours I put into a project - whether Agency-related or otherwise - and outlining what I actually achieved during those hours helped me better understand my work habits and flow. The logs helped me understand how to optimize my time. I finally started to feel productive again, to organize my thoughts and my tasks and time.
Moving out of the LDT program, though bittersweet, will help me streamline my commitments at least a bit. But I have no idea what awaits me after graduation. Will it be continuing as a college lecturer? Will I work for an instructional design firm or agency? Perhaps a larger organization as an in-house designer? Maybe it's something I haven't even considered yet. But whatever it is, I now know better how to organize myself and make sure I stay on task, and it's thanks to something as innocuous as the Learning Agency making sure I logged my work hours. Like I said at the top of this article: I'm prepared, and it's thanks partly to this experience. I'm so excited to see where life takes me next!
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