Week 2

This morning I overheard someone in the office exclaim, "they (a customer) had an Aha Moment," as she shared highlights from the ISTE tradeshow and re-settled into the LR office. The LR office bustles again as the team of Learning Resources reps/ ISTE attendees return from the four-day event and back to the stomping grounds of Fairway Drive.

Funnily enough, this week's topic is about "aha moments." When I read the topic Julie posted yesterday, I began to brainstorm what I would include in this post. My original plan was to begin with something clever like talking about Oprah's trumpetting "AHA!" blurt in her show years ago and coining the phrase Aha Moment thereafter. But I'll deviate from Plan A a little and write more on a whim.

The phrase is pretty intuitive to understand because it's self-explanatory, like chocolate chip cookie or vanilla-flavored cupcakes, but aha moments are different in that can vary by situation and culminate in different ways; they can be little battles won on a daily basis, or they can be monumental occasions, critical turning points, that have been years in the making and, or, struggle.

It would be funny to run through all the little aha moments I've had since starting the internship, because who doesn't like to laugh about someone's clumsy/naive/silly stories every once in a while? It's refreshing. I guess a good example of this would be the realization of mine to not drive to work on the left lane of the highway. Yesterday, I was driving 70mph in the left lane and noticed that a black sedan was following closely behind. The sedan then switched one lane to the right and subsequently switched back to our original lane, and passed me up. The driver also rolled down his window to gesture that I should leave the left lane because of my slow(er) driving. Lesson learned - kind of.

However, for the purposes of maintaining my arsenal of comical entertainment (because it's limited), I want to view my aha moments in a more serious light. I haven't arrived at an Aha Moment since beginning my time at LR, and I can't be certain that I will after the internship is over. Because, to me, aha moments culminate unexpectedly from a cloud of months or years of rumination and bring a moment of precise clarity, which will subsequently fuel me with unwavering determination.

What I have received from my two weeks at LR is a string of events and conversations that I think will contribute to my arrival at this moment. I've been told to not be afraid of failure and to not always feel like I need to fulfill a rubric of expectations, as a lot of my educational background has ingrained in me. Allowing myself to tackle Michelle's and Mike's projects with full speed while enjoying the ride while I do it will be a delicate balance I need to find for myself.