Learning Journal 24

I was really impressed today in class about the importance of being flexible.  I think sometimes I get caught up in schedules and goals and getting things crossed off lists and can miss the importance of what I'm doing.  Ashley was talking about this in class when she was saying how people can be so worried about reaching their goal numbers, they miss the importance of their project.  I kind of liked what she said about how it's important to not just be goal oriented but to also be intention oriented.  I definitely don't think only being intention oriented is enough by itself. If we were always intention oriented, then I feel like we wouldn't accomplish nearly enough, because we could just settle and make ourselves feel better by saying, "well I had good intentions."  Kind of like the old saying, "the road to hell is paved with good intentions."  But I do definitely understand that if you are so obsessed with reaching your goals, you can miss a lot of stuff a long the way.  I think this is something important that I will need to remember in Tonga.

First of all, my project is to learn about families in Tonga and to be immersed in the culture.  Although I will have goals to interview so many families a week, or to do so many activities to meet people, the reason I'm doing these things is to learn about the families, and not to reach the numbers.  So, if I spend a lot of time with one family learning about them and can't fit in another interview that week, I think that's ok because I'm still learning a lot.  Secondly,  it's important for me to not set too many strict goals because I can't control what happens completely while I'm there.  We talked with Sione last week about how people don't set plans for a specific time because things always come up and they are always "running late."  So, I have to make sure that I don't set myself a rigid schedule that would be dependent on everyone else being on time or being where I need them to be at a certain time.  Instead of spending time being frustrated about plans not working out or about not finding someone to interview that day, I need to make sure that I am focusing first on getting involved in the community and putting myself in culturally unfamiliar or uncomfortable situations, like Ashley said in class today.  That is going to make my experience better and help me to learn more than if I am just worried about getting a certain number of interview or so many pages of notes.