First-Year Seminar (FYS) 101-124, We’re All “Humans of New York,” needs your help! This semester this class is recreating the popular humansofnewyork.comblog and its recent “Quarantine Stories” and is looking for participants who want to share a happy story. Story ideas include “Maybe something amazing happened to you. Maybe you overcame something that seemed impossible. Maybe somebody changed your life, and you want the world to know about them.” Send a short description of the story and a photo to College of Arts & Sciences Assistant Dean and Director of Academic Innovation and Associate Professor of Exercise Science Jessica Peacock, Ph.D., at jpeacock@su.edu by Friday, Sept.25, and if chosen, you will conduct a Zoom interview with a student from the course. Stories will be shared with the Shenandoah community later in the semester.
Tell us the best thing that’s ever happened to you! Or even better — tell us about the best person that’s ever happened to you! Questions? Contact Dr. Jessica Peacock at jpeacock@su.edu.
Changing your perspective
Changing your perspective is a very valuable tool for understanding a situation better and avoiding false views. The simplest example of this is the literal one. If you look at a room from a different position, you will see different things.
Let's PUKE
What is something that you know for sure is true? What is something that you love and you can't imagine yourself never doing, seeing, eating, saying, feeling, again? What would you be willing to try that you never thought you would?
“Instead of complaining that the rose bush is full of thorns, be happy the thorn bush has roses.” ~Proverb
We have a choice in how we view things. Consider these thinking techniques:
Think like someone else One way to look at your challenge differently is by imagining how someone else might try to solve your problem. For maximum effect, pick someone (in)famous. What would Dr. Crowley do in your situation? What about Oprah, Tom Brady, or Drake? Your famous associate doesn’t even have to be real. Imagining how James Bond, Harry Potter, or Luke Skywalker might attempt to solve your problem can be just as insightful.
The Time Traveler Imagine for a moment that time travel will be invented at some point in the future. Hold that thought.
Imagining how your experienced 90-year-old self would give you advice, helps to create psychological distance. The exercise allows you to shift your perspective and to see approaches you would otherwise overlook.
Make it worse Another great way to change your view on a problem is by imagining ways to worsen the situation. This might seem ridiculous, but if there’s anything reading this article might have taught you, it is that there can be a lot of value in ridiculousness. Thinking about ways to make your situation even more horrible than it already leads to surprising insights.
The ‘Make it worse’ technique consists of three very simple steps:
Step 1. How could you make your situation even worse? Step 2. What could be the possible benefits of this aggravation? Step 3. Use new insights to generate as many ideas as possible for tackling the initial problem.
The Reversal To change your perspective, it sometimes is enough to just need to change your question. After all, the way you describe your problem determines what direction you will look for solutions. Actively change your problem statement and you’ll force yourself to generate more original solutions.
One way of doing this is changing the order of the keywords in your problem statement. For instance, don’t ask ‘How do we make sure that fewer people take the car to their work?’, but ‘How do we make sure that fewer cars take people to their work?’ While such a ‘reversed’ challenge sometimes sounds odd and illogical, it often sparks much more creative solutions. In this case, it might lead you from pondering about different means of transportation (like trains or bikes) to considering ways to get people to carpool (fewer cars for the same number of people).
Assignment for Tuesday
1. Look at something differently this weekend.
2. Take a picture of it.
3. Describe it.
4. Now, describe it differently.
Then a 1-page puke about your process of figuring out how to think differently.
What did you do? What made you do it? What surprised you?
Be prepared to show you the photo(s) and talk about thinking differently.
Creativity is not art. It is not just a characteristic of tortured geniuses and mad scientists. Creativity is a capacity – it is something that we can all learn to use more effectively. It allows us to develop ideas to solve problems in different ways and to spot, adapt to, embrace, and capture opportunities. TIME TO PUKE: Make a list of 20 creative people, organizations, or ideas. Write them down as fast as you can. They don’t have to be famous. What are some of the things they’ve done that you consider creative? How have these examples influenced you?
First, what did you think of Chris Temple? You are going to make some art about something that you feel is important: How do you know what you care about? Think back to when you either rejected "the story" or you adopted a new story. What are the things that make you cry? What are the things that make you angry? What are you doing when you feel most like yourself? Take a look at some of the answers Social justice issues can be delineated into two categories, although they are often co-dependent: Inter-Social Treatment and Unequal Government Regulation. Inter-Social Treatment involves the treatment of a group(s) of other people based on personally-held biases and prejudices. These prejudices most often manifest in sociological categories such as: Race Gender Age Sexual Orientation Religion Nationality Education Mental or Physical Ability Unequal Government Regulation involves laws and regulations that purposefully or otherwise c...
Here is a list of the assignments from this semester 1. Thinking Differently Assignment 2. Social Justice Art 3. Photo Assignment 4. Meet my advisor essay 5. Book Review Photo essay 6. Blackout Poetry 7. Putting it all together! We will get together on Zoom next week and show some of our art and talk about how to put together your final portfolio. Meanwhile, here is how I put together my last art piece.
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