Serendipity and the art of being unoriginal

serendipity/serrndippiti/ • noun the occurrence and development of events by chance in a happy or beneficial way.

AskOxford: serendipity

I'm busy trying to write an assignment.  I come up with what I think is an idea that might work.  I spend ages researching it and finding a justification for what I've been thinking.  Looked into the pedagogy.  Tried to understand the situation from multiple perspectives.  Finally start to shape my ideas into something meaningful.

Then... I get told by someone that what my idea is occurring elsewhere and is "almost exactly as you are describing!"... and my brain goes 'flurp'.  I read a paper on it and there it is.  Exactly what I'd been proposing.  But better.  If only I'd had my head out of the packing boxes for the past couple of months and been paying proper attention I'd have known it.  But I didn't.  And now my head's feeling marginally more empty than a biography of a glamour model.

So - hello SocialLearn (who, it turned out were thinking what I was thinking, only better) and thank you for my moment of serendipity when I realised that a) I wasn't coming up with something totally stupid and b) that I'm so far off writing this stuff properly that I've still more than loads to learn about the basics of this whole elearning malarky.

Deadline's today and it's back to the drawing board for me.  At least I know now that I've really got to nail down my thinking and stay more abreast of current developments than I have been doing of late.  Moment's of serendipity.  Gotta love 'em.

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