Betty, When You Call Me, You Can Call Me Org

Paul Simon is contemplating writing a song about orgs

Lately I've been having a little bit of a dilemma. At the beginning of this semester, I wanted to try to write a paper on the topic of transformative learning, and how that might connect to my interest in nonprofit management education. As the weeks went by, I continued to struggle with this because the two ideas weren't gelling together, and I also started to incorporate topics of social action and civil society into this piece. You might be asking yourself, "Why is she trying to connect two things that are kind of at opposite ends of the spectrum? All of these social issues to one person's learning experience?" Well, I don't have an answer for you, except to say that maybe I hadn't thought this through well enough. Maybe on paper or in my head this sounded like it would work, but it hasn't been, and it's not going to.

I had a realization earlier this week. And that realization is, I love organizations. I love talking about them, I love thinking about how they change, I love discussing how they work and don't work, I especially love talking about the role they play in society (aka, civic action). Anyway, I realized that while there is something beautiful in learning and the transformation that takes place within an individual, what I am most interested in is how this happens on a much larger scale. I'm talking collectives of people and organizations and how they move, even learn. So, I'm abandoning my initial research topic and going back to my orgs. I was even reassured by this just today because while talking with my supervisor, Jim, about the project we are working on, we both got super giddy about organizational change. I felt my head get tingly, and that's a good sign.