When good resolutions go bad

One of my resolutions this year was to set myself a professional development plan, and stick to it.
In an earlier post on Where do we find professional development for librarians?, I wrote that I had joined the International Librarians Network that runs a programme pairing you up with a fellow librarian in another country.

In due course, I was given the contact details for a librarian in Australia, and, a little nervously - felt like I was writing up a bio for an online dating service! - I sent an email introducing myself. Perhaps I shouldn't have made the first move. Perhaps I was too forward. Perhaps I wasn't what she was looking for. Because I never heard back from her...

Now, we were urged to contact the ILN if we didn't hear from our designated partner so we could be re-assigned - which I didn't do in time because, well, I went away on holiday! And there are many more awesome success stories of librarians hooking up all over the world through this programme and I still believe it to be a wonderful idea. But that doesn't help me and my resolution to stick to my professional development plan.

I needed something else to take its place, and I found it. The Geneva Learning Foundation was offering an open-access course on Digital Learning, it was being run online smack-bang in the middle of the July holidays, and my application was successful.

What could go wrong?

Absolutely nothing, except the couple of hours I was expected to set aside each day for the course got eaten by novel reading, novel writing, novel editing, gardening (something I seldom do) and baking (something I never do).

In a nutshell, I didn't do one iota of work for the course. Another failure.

But onwards! It's the Google in Education conference at the beginning of September and the RASA conference at the end of September, and, touch wood, hopefully my professional development plan will be back on track...