Follow your inspiration

Hi everyone,

Thanks to one of my doctoral students for being the inspiration for this post. I am frequently confronted with folks who want exemplars (this I can understand) and/or who are insecure to do what they think is best and want to follow "the" model." This is what the rest of the educational system breeds, so no harm in following the path that lead you to success in the past. However .......

I would coach (others may disagree) NOT to change from your ideas to match a model given in a course. Why? Because those choices are stale. At some point in the past your course content author or professor chose a few exemplars - but once the choice was made it became static. Words on the other hand are fresh - so when you become inspired from words, don't turn back to match the older models.

What may work best, and a system of which I am a big advocate, is to adopt an "and/both" stance. Try to incorporate the ideas that inspired you AND those which make sense from an exemplar. However my bottom line here is to coach for you to stay true to your spirit. A doctorate is to be a rite of passage from one place to that lofty doctorateness status (smile). Only by being true to your spirit (from which inspiration comes) can you get there with grace.

Of course if your own spirit leads you to want to follow an exemplar exactly - so be it. Put this in the back of your mind and let it hatch as a new way of being in its own time and space.

all the best,
Alana