This week we’re considering rationales and strategies for reinvention. Today: boredom – a less-desirable reason for reinvention.
“I’m bored with this, time to change it up!”
So starts so many ill-conceived reinventions. Without pedagogical reasoning, a strong plan, or an assessment of the audience, making major changes for boredom does a disservice to the community you seek to serve.
Of course, novelty is a vital part of staying engaged with your own work. But ideally, novelty comes out of careful decisions and through subtle changes that retain what works, not wholesale reinvention. I have seen reinvention made at moments that really stress students out, when the status quo would have felt safer and more attainable.