girl nutkin in the BA: the day after ...

april 9 ... yesterday with @greenleafcenter (first saturday of each month), i started - foundations of servant leadership with several others around the globe who are interested in and/or living the servant-leader philosophy.

isabel lopez (over here as course faculty and her web) is our instructor, and dolores jones (over here) is our program coordinator. as stated for the course, we must -

Read all assigned required material on listening and developing your colleagues
Undertake a project during which the participant uses listening skills or survey instruments to learn about and report on the needs of colleagues or customers
Write a short paper (8-12 pages reflecting learning, knowledge and insights that merit the certificate)
Participate in telephone conference calls (approx. 5 telephone conference calls lasting 1.5 hours each) with faculty members and other participants
Participate in discussions using the Wiki

yesterday's class ... what a treat to have don frick, the author of robert k. greenleaf's biography, as part of our first class. admittedly, i shared with the class that i had not yet finished our reading assignment and specifically was at the "LSD" part of greenleaf's biography. yes - THAT is part of greenleaf's life. so amidst the many moved-to-tears, heartfelt moments, i must say i am enjoying the many life experiences that don has had the wonderful opportunity to explore and share.

journal for our class ... as part of writing our paper, the following questions are prompts for our keeping a journal as we go through our class over the next several months -

What are concepts that speak to you... that cause you struggles... that create questions for you?
How does Greenleaf's work make meaning for you?
There is a reason you took this class, what are your hopes for yourself in this class?
What can you use from your readings and discussions today to help you chart your life course?

therefore, as part of my classwork journal which is part of a class wiki, i will have blog posts that relate to class. or in a case like this, i am sharing what i have written in my class journal. because our wiki is restricted to class members, there are links in my copied journal posts that will not be accessible from this blog. oh well.

FOR YOU reading any of my journal entries ... Thank you in advance for taking the time to do so, and do feel free to comment, or if there is information I share that you would like to edit (presuming you may have edit privileges), share/edit away!

JUST SHARING THOUGHTS with class - I am trying out our wiki for journaling. As suggested for writing the Final Paper and as encouraged by Isabel for us to share thoughts with our class, a dedicated place in our wiki will certainly be convenient for me. I will make sure to use links for any "cross-cutting" comments I may contribute.

If you would like to do something similar in this wiki for your journal and need some help or a little kick-start, I'm not an expert, but I certainly am willing to help you out. Just let me know.

Overview of intended folder contents ... I have created this folder - Shirley - Journal - with the intention of including pages that are related to our class work and discussions -

my random thoughts and ah-ha moments,
answers to questions posed for our reflection,
additional thoughts on class discussions/meetings or comments I may share with others on a different part of this wiki, and
other resources for which I come across that may be of interest to others.
I have only used a wiki once, so I am looking forward to learning more of this format. In fact, I am using this page to explore some of the features.

About "Entries and Overview" ... Over the course of the next 5 months, I expect this folder will be populated with several pages. Therefore, I will include links to subsequent journal entries as a sort of "table of contents" of my Shirley-Journal folder for ease of navigation and reference. I also may include links to others' comments/entries as part of my journal.

On journaling ... I started journaling a bit more formally many years ago in the '90s when someone introduced me to J.Cameron's The Artist's Way. For those of you familiar with this book, although I have not kept up my morning pages, perhaps blogging has been a bit of a surrogate, along with other writing practices I have developed through the years that serve a somewhat similar purpose - however, admittedly, nothing as powerful as my experiences when I wrote my 3-4 pages each morning back in the day. For those unfamiliar with this book and interested in journaling, I feel Cameron has an interesting perspective of sparking and tapping into creativity through her approach.

[NOTE: I have come across several on-line journal resources. I will make sure to write a blog post about those at a later time and include a link as part of journal.]

What I typically do when I journal ... Typically, I am always with a method to "capture" my thoughts (or as I've often refer - "the voices in my head, chills up my spine, tilt of the head, tingling or knot in my stomach") that often will morph into a personal journal entry. I capture my thoughts either on paper or electronically - always with me are a purse-size moleskine, an action runner notepad (mainly for moving forward my "ah-ha" moments), and my droid (presuming batteries charged) where i keep my springpad app, which syncs to the on-line version. (I'm including some images and links (when you press the image) as examples and NOT as endorsements. Some people may prefer visuals/examples.)

(my home page on springpad)

[NOTE: Just a little note about springpad - I have NOT yet used the springpad app to its potential. A few friends of mine use or have talked about evernote. If you use or intend to use a tool like springpad or evernote, I certainly am interested in your opinion about what features/benefits you like (and don't like).]

On blogging ... I've not been blogging as regularly and frequently during the past month, however, as a complement to this journal, I also will share thoughts on my blog, which serves as a typical, "personal life observed/experienced" blog - girl nutkin in the BA. To keep things a bit more orderly, I am using on my blog the label/tag greenleaf for class-related entries, so one does not have to search around the blog for class-related posts. It's likely my classwork journal entries may be inspired by a blog entry or vice-verse. My blog entries likely will reflect more thoughts beyond what I write in my class journal entries or perhaps a blog entry will be verbatim from my journal entry. Also, my blog entries may be a little more free-form and cheeky, however, I will do my best to make sure that any blog entries I reference in my journal are relevant.