Wow. Can you write "wow" without an exclaimation point? I did. How cool was it to get the plane off the ground? Mr. Beitleman and I have been planning this course for the better part of a year, yet neither one of us knew what to expect this morning. I read an interesting quote from Dwight Eisenhower this week. He was talking about success during battle. He said something like, "planning was crucial for victory, but the plans were completely useless."
I want to echo that idea. You can over-think something. You can plan too much and go down in flames if you're not flexible. Bottom line: you've got to fight the battle with the army you have. Or, in the case of Duke Ellington, you've got to arrange a song for the band you have. To use a metaphor the ASFA faculty worked on earlier this week, "you've got to run a river with the people you've got in the raft."
One of our keys to success in this class will be flexibility. My former mentor, David Kesler, used to tell us to "go with the flow" when doing ecological field work. I take that to heart, and I think that approach will serve us well in this class and in this century. Going with the flow does not mean you don't have a plan or an objective. You absolutely have a plan and an objective. How you modify the plan to reach your objective is what allows you to be successful. There's a word that describes what I'm talking about. Do you know what it is?
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Definitely down with the difference between "planning" and "plans" -- there's a comment about the relationship between process and product there. I think products are, ultimately, important. It's just that what we produce and what we think we're producing are often two different things. Intention is often overrated. "Getting right" with that idea is a useful skill, methinks. (I think we're going to have to figure out how to disagree at some point before the end of the semester, or else we'll get predictable!)
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