What Poetry Taught Me About Instructional Design
Before I was an instructional designer, I was a poet.
I spent my college and graduate school years studying the metaphors in Rumi and the restraint in Emily Dickinson.
I wrote of the tragic fates of Icarus and Sisyphus, and years later, taught MLK's use of anaphora and allusion in "I Have a Dream."
It’s partly this love of language, the delight in creating meaning through thoughtfully edited words, that makes me good at what I do now as an instructional designer.
Too much training suffers from a lack of brevity.
Poetry taught me to cut the fluff.
Instructional design made it a mission.
There's nothing I love more than reducing 50 slides to a 5 minute scenario, or swapping walls of text (RISE, I’m watching you 👀) with a well-placed decision point.
If you're a career changer, don't underestimate the skills you picked up in past lives.
Look back. Reframe. What felt like a plot twist might have been character development.
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Which unexpected skill from a former role shapes the way you work today? Tell me in the comments.
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