Instructional Design Gal: On Lifelong Dreams

When I was a young "instructional design gal", I often dreamed of becoming an author.  I had a journal full of short stories, poems, novellas, and even a short novel.  I wanted to go to Howard University, Major in English, minor in Computer Science, then transfer into a graduate program and achieve an MFA in Creative Writing.  My eleventh grade mind was already thinking that if I had the MFA in creative writing, I would have a back up plan in case I was unable to "make it" as an author...I could become an English, or creative writing professor.
I'd tucked my dream of becoming an author away so long, I almost forgot that I had it.

I also had a secondary dream in High School, the safe dream, the one my parents encouraged me to pursue, which was to get a associates degree in Computer Studies, and work for some mid-level company doing computer programming.  I actually got an "A" in a high school level programming course in BASIC, one of the few in the class to receive such a high mark  The circumstances of growing up in a small town, along with the pressure to pursue a career which would allow me to immediately transition into a career to support myself financially with the smallest investment of capital possible led me to chose my safe option, plan B, going to a community college about 30 minutes away and pursuing an Associates Degree in Computer Information Systems.

While I was able to excel in the heavy programming courses, such as Visual Basic.Net, the courses that interested me most involved web technologies, and playing with multimedia.  At the time when I was working on my AAS degree, from 1998-2001, the Web 2.0 technologies that we take for granted today were not even a forethought....but I knew that I loved designing fan webpages for my favorite musician....could this be a career path for me....graphic design or multimedia design perhaps?  At the school, I served as an intern, first helping students on Microsoft Office software in a computer lab (where I learned that I liked to teach), and through that connection, I was able to serve as an intern in the area of Multimedia Development, and upon graduation with my AAS degree, they created a fulltime position just for me, "out of the air", I even helped write the job description to which I applied in September 2001.  

Serving as a multimedia specialist is where I first discovered my passion for Instructional Design...as an intern, I was doing much of the work of an Instructional Designer who left the college high and dry after a six month stint.  I had no clue what instructional design was...but I did know that I enjoyed working with the software, director, flash, recording videos, editing videos, recording sound and helping turn a "blob" of content into a useful educational product for our burgeoning growth of distance education students, a whopping 20 students at the time.  I soon learned that figuring out how to turn that "blob" of content into a useful product, one with instructive value was Instructional design--and I was hooked.  A love affair of sorts.  So I found my career direction, and I continued to pursue the educational goals established as a child- a Bachelor's degree part time through a local university, which I've recently completed, and now am in pursuit of my master's. 

Just this morning, driving into work, I realized that I've reached my life long dreams albeit sideways.  When I go to work each morning, I get to be an author, and I may not be writing like Maya Angelou, but I do get to write, Job Aids, Manual Chapters, and training plans for face to face and online courses.  I also get to do a bit of programming, fiddling with HTML to get pages to appear how I want them to appear in the Learning Management system, programming a flash tutorial to get it to function as needed visually, or for instruction. I'm also involved in selecting attractive graphics that help shape the learning experience, and give faculty pointers on how to improve their own webpages, so I get to satisfy my graphic design thirst.  I'm also living my early dream of instructing, although they are not English Students, but community college faculty receiving training in how to be good instructional designers for their online students.  So, I get to be a writer, a programmer, and a graphic artist, and a teacher all rolled up into one.  Now I'm not claiming to have the level of expertise of a master in any of these disciplines, but the role of the Instructional Designer touches upon all these roles.  Stretching myself in all of these roles keeps work fascinating for me.  I can think of no other profession where I could honestly say that I was gainfully employed achieving all of my varied lifelong career dreams.  I expect that I will be involved in some aspect of Instructional Design for a long time.