Serendipity in learning...

Merriam and Caffarella, in Learning in Adulthood, cite a paper by G.E. Spear in which he presents a model of self directed learning that has opportunities, knowledge and chance all play roles in self directed learning (112).

It gave me pause to think about how chance encounters have furthered my own learning. At first, I was hard pressed to think of much, other than a series of rather random, sometimes unfortunate events (including a layoff) that led me to the job and career that I have now. And I would say that the chance event of getting my job led me to meet someone who was to become a mentor. From that, I figured out what I wanted to do when I grew up. So, I guess in the end, my whole career as I know it now and my decision to work on my masters in instructional design were all very much based on a couple of chance events. Who knows what I would be doing today instead.

Another chance event that I think about is an English professor I had in college. I enjoyed his Shakespeare class so much (a huge undergrad affair – I think a couple hundred…) that I signed up for his next class. How, I don’t know, but he remembered my name from my tests and papers (I had never bothered to talk to him in the lecture series). From taking the smaller class, we became friends and he encouraged me to apply for a grant to study overseas in a program he was working with. I actually got the grant that paid for my plane ticket to London, where I took classes and worked on a paper on the British theater. By another chance, a friend of my sister’s husband who was living in England helped arrange interviews for me with the financial directors of the Royal Shakespeare Company and that National Theatre. Not bad for chance.

I would say that I think I have had more planned learning experiences than ones by that happen by accident, but it does seem to reinforce the theory that the more random events have had the most impact than anything else.