Dear diary,
In the materials, there is a horror story, and I’m experiencing a horror story myself.
I was just about to take a test for my project task when I was overwhelmed by bad news. Something terrible happened: a school shooting in Serbia. Ten children were killed. The crime was committed by a 13-year-old boy. I was simply stunned.
However, I have to set aside my pain and emotions, even though it’s very difficult. We are in a state of emergency here. But this situation also affects my project in another way: it’s simply uncomfortable to talk about anything else other than the state of schools. That’s why I have to postpone the testing for a few weeks.
But I tried to make one post anyway.
I managed to attract 66 likes and 10 comments. Maybe that’s enough?
My horror story:
It’s rare for me to give up and not pursue my ideas. However, sometimes it’s necessary to accept it as a possible solution. It happened to me this winter when I applied for the OE4BW (2023) project at UNG. I had a great and very interesting idea, and I had an excellent plan on how to realize and achieve it. However, things sometimes go wrong. All the participants I was counting on, thinking they were firmly with me, somehow backed out. In other words, I didn’t have accurate information about certain interpersonal relationships that were permanently disrupted, thus posing significant obstacles to achieving my goals. I tried an alternative approach, excluding that institution and opting for a personal approach, trying to do everything on my own. However, many colleagues offered to help, but I realized it’s extremely difficult to rely on them because the materials they sent me were all without references, with watermarked visuals. In other words, unusable. If I were to work with them, I would have to revise other people’s work. But then the question arises: am I allowed to do that since intellectual work is protected?
Since I couldn’t create all the materials myself, I decided to give up. Surprisingly, my colleagues from the OE4BW (https://oe4bw.org/) project accepted my decision very well, without anger. They simply understood that sometimes certain projects are not meant to be pursued at a given time.
What was supposed to be a horror story didn’t turn out to be one. Failure is also a place of learning, so there’s no room for worrying. We can learn something at any moment, and we learn best from our mistakes.
Resourses:
- Open Education for a Better World (OE4BW) International online mentoring program on
The University of Nova Gorica and UNESCO Chair on Open Technologies for OER and Open Learning at the Jožef Stefan Institute, Available at:https://oe4bw.org/ - Screenshot from Facebook, available at: https://www.facebook.com/panicmina/
- Picture:https://pixabay.com/