The best-laid schemes o’ mice an’ men
Gang aft agley,
An’ lea’e us not but grief an’ pain,
for promis’d joy!
(excerpt To a Mouse, on Turning Her Up in Her Nest with the Plough
–Robert Burns, 1785)
It sounds right that Robert Burns poem about a mouse, the name of the novel on which the Alternate Reality Game (ARG) was based (The Tale of Despereaux: Being the Story of a Mouse, a Princess, Some Soup and a Spool of Thread), and the myriad of disasters faced during the ARG’s launch coincided like the proverbial “perfect storm.”
It began with The Incredible Missing Books Caper; although we ordered the books at the beginning of October, we still hadn’t received any word as to when they would be in. Usually a two week endeavor, it turned into four. We made inquiries to our supply room liaison and learned that the books we ordered were missing and would have to be reordered. The reorder turned into two more weeks before they were delivered. However by this time, we decided that we just couldn’t afford to the break in momentum that two major holidays would bring. We opted to remain safe and begin in January.
We began the book on January 18th, planned to hear from the princess by January 31st. February 1st, we were hit with an ice storm that took us out for four days. Then the very next week, we were hit with another “snow day!” Mouse, I certainly felt your “grief an’ pain.”
Okay, so next year I’ll order a class set in August for launch in September. I’d say that there’s no chance of using a weather day then, but I’ve learned my lesson about well-laid plans.
More about the ARG and ensuing Problem-Based Learning element later.
