…. Who bit off more than she could chew ….

So I’d decided to do the studying, I’d set myself up for it, saved the money (not easy for a spendthrift like me), and disciplined myself to set aside time for study. It was a shame the decathlon training had to be put on the back burner, but a girl can only do so much.

And how smug was I? I was coping with the vast volume of paper delivered to my door, I read, I scribbled, I read again. I evaluated and cogitated, I paced the room chanting Ranganathan’s five laws of library science. I absorbed knowledge like it was oxygen. I got a B+ in my first assignment and a B- in my second. I was indestructible!

And then, somehow, my boast of being technically minded when answering the interview question about learning and adapting backfired, and I got nominated with CCL Learn. Now, what I meant when I said technically minded was that I can change UK plugs to NZ plugs, I can tile a bathroom, I can lay flooring and, more importantly, I can programme the My Sky. Technically minded to me does not mean I can use a computer keyboard like a virtuoso at a grand piano. Widgets? Gadgets? Wikis? RSS feeds? Podcasts? What? Speak English! And if all that doesn’t sound like a foreign language what about Personal Horizon Frameworks, Unconference, and In the Cloud? I’ve tried being in the cloud at work, the customers really don’t like it. They much prefer you to look them in the eye and show at least a modicum of attention.

The first module was blogging. Easy enough, like speaking but you can press the backspace and take foot out of mouth. Quite like it. Then RSS feeds and podcasting. RSS feeds – okay, get that, subscribed to Google Reader and had a bit of a play. Not something I’d bother using outside work, but handy to know about. Next module - podcasting. And here it all goes pearshaped. I’m flummoxed. I just can’t work out how to subscribe to them, where to get them, and actually why I would want to. Perhaps part of the problem is that it just doesn’t interest me, so as soon as it gets difficult I tune out. And whilst I enjoy a challenge, it has to be something that I can actually say I’ll learn from and this, for me, just feels now like something I have to do, rather than something I want to do.

I’m going to try to do it at home, away from work, and see if a different environment helps me focus more. And drinking Baileys whilst working is so much more acceptable away from the workplace, don’t you think?