ENG 121 Research Blog by Sara Henson https://padlet.com/sara_e_henson/swowhpzdu22l Does getting older have to mean conforming and losing creativity? en-us 2018-10-02 17:40:12 UTC 2023-02-18 04:59:13 UTC hello@padlet.com Origin Story: The Day I Knew I Didn't Want to Grow Up sara_e_henson https://padlet.com/sara_e_henson/swowhpzdu22l/wish/288284597 I never understood grass. It never made sense to me. When I was young I wondered why one wouldn’t plant bushes across a lawn or flowers or maybe vines of lush ivy, twisting like nature’s green noodles.  I remember the day I heard Tom Petty sing “you belong among the wildflowers” when I was about 10. I was in the backyard of the house I grew up in on Garonne Drive in Missouri. The warm summer sun gleamed over the leaves of giant oak trees that touched together to form a canopy over the yard. The humidity of midday wouldn’t let my skin dry and I lay there on the blue patchwork quilt my grandma stitched, trying not to work up any more sweat. Tiny rays of sunshine poked through the leaf canopy and glittered down like a disco ball. Hundreds of cicadas glided their wings together like bows to the strings of violins and the yard was filled with their symphony. 
I turned up Tom Petty’s song playing on the radio louder and a faint angst filled me. I felt sad that I didn’t live among the wildflowers. Instead, I lived among tall fescue that my mom spent every weekend pruning. Why didn’t adults want to live among sunflowers in their own fields of sunshine? More practically, why didn’t all adults grow food in these patches perfect for gardens? And why didn’t I ever see them riding bicycles for fun?
I posed all of these questions to my mom. “Mom, why do people plant grass in their yards?” 
“It’s just what you do,” she replied without really considering the question.
“But, wouldn’t it be better to plant something better?”
“Probably not,” she again replied automatically.
That was the day I knew I didn’t ever want to grow up.

]]> 2018-10-02 17:42:46 UTC https://padlet.com/sara_e_henson/swowhpzdu22l/wish/288284597 Reflection sara_e_henson https://padlet.com/sara_e_henson/swowhpzdu22l/wish/288287873 On growing up:
Do have any memories from childhood in which you thought "grown-ups" were kind of lame? :)
Are there any things you did as a child that you wish you did now as an adult? What are they? What is keeping you from doing them?
Are there ways you try to maintain a child-like sense of creativity?]]> 2018-10-02 17:47:18 UTC https://padlet.com/sara_e_henson/swowhpzdu22l/wish/288287873 TED Talk: "Why You Should Make Useless Things sara_e_henson https://padlet.com/sara_e_henson/swowhpzdu22l/wish/288323454 https://www.ted.com/talks/simone_giertz_why_you_should_make_useless_things/transcript

In her TED Talk, "Why You Should Make Useless Things," Simone Giertz explains why she makes useless things and why everyone else should too. Overall, she started to make useless things as a way to take herself out of a pressure-filled cycle of always trying to succeed. To do this, she started to focus on building things that would fail like a machine that would cut hair using drones, one with a rubber hand attached to an alarm clock that would smack her awake in the morning, or one that would inefficiently cut her vegetables for her. She says that doing this means that any pressure to succeed is already taken away and she can focus purely on the enthusiasm she has for building things. Ultimately, she says that this stops herself from thinking she knows exactly how the world works and allows her to purely express "joy and humility."

In the TED Talk, Simone closes by saying that creating useless items "turns off the voice in your head that says you know exactly how the world works and maybe a toothbrush helmet isn't the answer, but at least you're asking the question." Connecting this to my Origin Story, I think my interaction at the end with my mom is an example of how I, as a child, saw the benefit of useless things like a lawn full of sunflowers, but, as an adult, she thought she knew how the world works. I think it is a common occurrence in the transition from childhood to adulthood. Adults become more practical, have less time, and generally stop building/doing things if it doesn't have a use or propel them to a final goal. As I watched this, I was thinking that I honestly don't remember the last time I made something absolutely useless. This relates to my Origin Story idea because making useless things was something I used to do all the time in childhood (i.e. blanket forts, LEGO houses, macaroni art, etc.). I like to sew and alter clothing items I find at thrift stores, but that work ultimately isn't useless because at the end of the day, I have a new garment of clothing that has a use.

This TED Talk can directly answer one of the questions I asked in a previous post (Are there any things you did as a child that you wish you did now as an adult?) I think Giertz's TED Talk explains why it is important to maintain creativity as an adult...because it forces us to "ask the question" about how the world works on a constant basis and helps us maintain an open mind about how the world should work.

Questions:
Did you build useless things as a child?
What useless item would you build and why?
Could you take time out of your day to build it? Why or why not?

Giertz, Simone. "Why You Should Make Useless Things." TED Talks. April 2018. TED, https://www.ted.com/talks/simone_giertz_why_you_should_make_useless_things.]]> 2018-10-02 18:40:18 UTC https://padlet.com/sara_e_henson/swowhpzdu22l/wish/288323454 "What Happens to Creativity as We Age?" sara_e_henson https://padlet.com/sara_e_henson/swowhpzdu22l/wish/288345553 https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/19/opinion/sunday/what-happens-to-creativity-as-we-age.html
In their article, "What Happens to Creativity as We Age?," Alison Gopnik and Tom Griffiths explore the differences between the creativity of children, adolescents, and adults through an experiment involving a machine capable of lighting up given the correct combination of blocks put upon it. They divided up the participants into four groups: 4- and 5-year olds; 6- to 11-year olds; 12- to 14-year olds; and adults. Simplifying the results of the experiment, what they found overall is that the 4- to 5-year olds were the most creative in their solutions and explanations, then the 6- to 11- year olds, then the 12- to 14- year olds. As could be expected, adults finished dead last in their use of creativity to get the machine to light up with the blocks and to explain the problem. Gopnik and Griffiths explain this by discussion the concepts of exploration and exploitation. They argue that adults, because they have more knowledge after years of exploration in childhood and adolescence, exploit this knowledge in order to solve problems and provide explanations. Conversely, children must explore and come up with creative solutions in order to solve and explain problems.

Part of the journey I am beginning in order to expound upon my Origin Story is to figure out just where everything went "wrong," or, in other words, how adults lose their creativity and ability to interact with the world using creativity instead of the status quo. Gopnik and Griffiths are asking all my right questions with "How does the ability to come up with unusual ideas change as we grow older? Does it begin to flag in adolescence? Before then?" Their experiment lends support to what I already assumed, that adults do lose creativity during the transition from childhood into adulthood.

Making a connection between this source and the previous one, Simone Giertz's TED Talk, what makes Giertz's stance so novel is that she is attempting to rekindle the use of her exploration tool, which, according to Gopnik and Griffiths, is used more in childhood than in adulthood. Gopnik and Griffiths suggest that the knowledge gained through childhood exploration can cause adults to no longer approach problems with creativity, but Giertz is actively attempting to stifle this status quo through exploration in adulthood, which she says allows her to continue to explore how the world works.

Questions:
Do you agree with Gopnik and Griffiths? Why or why not?
Did you notice yourself exploring less in order to solve problems as you got older?

Gopnik, Alison, and Tom Griffiths. “What Happens to Creativity as We Age?” The New York Times, The New York Times, 19 Aug. 2017, www.nytimes.com/2017/08/19/opinion/sunday/what-happens-to-creativity-as-we-age.html.]]> 2018-10-02 19:22:16 UTC https://padlet.com/sara_e_henson/swowhpzdu22l/wish/288345553 "Breaking Paradigms for Creativity and Success" sara_e_henson https://padlet.com/sara_e_henson/swowhpzdu22l/wish/291048033 http://eds.a.ebscohost.com.frccwc.idm.oclc.org/eds/pdfviewer/pdfviewer?vid=3&sid=885874b1-b910-4d8b-87ea-597c6329dc76%40sessionmgr4010

Summary:
In her article, "Breaking Paradigms for Creativity and Success," author Revathi Turaga discusses the part companies can play in stifling the creativity of its workers. First, she describes a paradigm as "a certain mode of thinking bounded by particular parameters and criteria" and can "limit one's thinking and perception" (Turaga 57). In other words, if a worker is given too many parameters and criteria, creativity may not flourish. Second, Turaga discusses her concept of variation and execution in a company, which she says influences how creative its employees are. She defines variation as "how much do the employees think of a number of ideas" and execution as "how much time and effort is put into analyzing" these ideas (Turaga 59). She further explains that a company that is low on both variation and execution does not encourage its employees to think creatively and does not put any creative ideas into action. A company that is low on variation, but high on execution puts ideas in action quickly that simply meet the status quo. A company with high variation and low execution encourages employees to think creatively, but does little with the ideas. Finally, a company that is high on both variation and execution is seen as "innovative in its approach and solutions" because it encourages its employees to generative creative ideas and swiftly uses these ideas, thus cycling back to provide further encouragement for brainstorming creatively (Turaga 60).

Response to the source:
I have to say that I agree with Turaga's arguments in this article. I have definitely worked at companies in which little to no creativity was encouraged, yet mundane ideas were quickly championed and I have worked at companies in which creativity was greatly encouraged, yet resulting ideas were not used at all. To me, the latter was the most crushing. I felt like I spent a lot of time working on something "outside the box" for it to be discarded easily as if it meant nothing. This would eventually lead me to cease creative brainstorming for the company because I suspected it would never be used and the company already had their plan in place, but just wanted it to seem as if I had input. I rarely stayed very long at these sorts of jobs. I have been at my current job for almost 6 years and, while I am back in school to make a career change, I have felt valued and encouraged to innovate in my ideas and I felt that good ideas were executed. This has most likely significantly contributed to my longevity at this company.

Make connections:
I chose this article on my research journey because I wanted to continue to look into what happens to adults as they age that causes them to lose creativity. In a previous post about "What Happens to Creativity as We Age?," I read up how children, adolescence, and adults differ in their creative problem solving. In this article, I wanted to find answers on how adults are effected by their employers, especially considering they spend 40+ hours a week being influenced by them!

Questions:
-Have you had jobs that you felt encouraged creativity in ideas?...one that discouraged creativity in ideas? How did it make you feel?
-Do you think employees are generally happier if they get to think creatively and see their innovations in action? Why or why not?

Turaga, Revathi. “Breaking Paradigms for Creativity and Success.” IUP Journal of Soft Skills, vol. 12, no. 2, June 2018, pp. 57–66. EBSCOhost, frccwc.idm.oclc.org/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=buh&AN=130776570&site=eds-live.

]]> 2018-10-10 01:28:39 UTC https://padlet.com/sara_e_henson/swowhpzdu22l/wish/291048033 "Secrets of the Creative Brain" sara_e_henson https://padlet.com/sara_e_henson/swowhpzdu22l/wish/291055444 http://eds.a.ebscohost.com.frccwc.idm.oclc.org/eds/detail/detail?vid=9&sid=c568ad90-b15d-4b7f-8402-7ca82a2e8870%40sessionmgr4007&bdata=JnNpdGU9ZWRzLWxpdmU%3d#AN=edsgcl.379837020&db=edsglr

Summary:
In her article, "Secrets of the Creative Brain," Nancy C. Andreasen wonders "What, in short, is the essence of creativity?" (64). First, she discusses several tests commonly used to measure creativity. One approach, she notes, is to test people's ability to use divergent thinking, or the ability to come up with many solutions to one problem such as coming up with many different uses for one brick. She notes, however, that this assumes that "divergent thinking is the essence of creativity, that creativity can be measured using tests, and that high-scoring individuals are highly creative people (Andreasen 66). The next approach she calls a "duck test" in that if it "walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it must be a duck" (Andreasen 66). In other words, if someone, such as a musician, author, or artist has been recognized as being creative, then they must be. Lastly, she discusses a study she conducted in which she scanned people's brains for activity as they performed four tasks. This study showed that the people considered to be more creative showed more brain activity in their association cortices.

Response to the source:
This article really got me thinking about the definition of creativity. When I was writing my Origin Story, it was just a given that children, including me during childhood, are more creative than adults. But, I never really thought how one would measure or test creativity. I suppose I have probably been using the "duck test" method Andreasen mentions in her article. I suppose I just knew it when I saw it, that if it quacked like creativity, it must have been creativity!

Make connections:
I like this article because it searches for a "nature" explanation for creativity, whereas the previous article "Breaking Paradigms for Creativity and Success" implied that everyone can be creative. I liked this article's approach from a neurological perspective that showed there is a biological difference between how a brain of someone who is considered creative looks in an PET scan versus the brain of someone who is not considered creative.

Questions:
-Do you consider yourself to be creative? Why or why not?
-Do you have friends or family that you consider to be creative? What about them makes you think that of them?

Andreasen, Nancy C. “Secrets of the Creative Brain: A Leading Neuroscientist Who Has Spent Decades Studying Creativity Shares Her Research on Where Genius Comes from, Whether It Is Dependent on High IQ--and Why It Is so Often Accompanied by Mental Illness.” The Atlantic, no. 1, 2014, p. 62. EBSCOhost, frccwc.idm.oclc.org/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=edsglr&AN=edsgcl.379837020&site=eds-live.


]]> 2018-10-10 02:13:42 UTC https://padlet.com/sara_e_henson/swowhpzdu22l/wish/291055444 Deep Reading of a Source: "What Happens to Creativity as We Age?" sara_e_henson https://padlet.com/sara_e_henson/swowhpzdu22l/wish/295281388 2018-10-22 03:24:20 UTC https://padlet.com/sara_e_henson/swowhpzdu22l/wish/295281388 Cross Pollination: "How Boredom Can Lead to Your Most Brilliant Ideas" sara_e_henson https://padlet.com/sara_e_henson/swowhpzdu22l/wish/296235303 https://www.ted.com/talks/manoush_zomorodi_how_boredom_can_lead_to_your_most_brilliant_ideas/transcript?referrer=playlist-why_it_s_sometimes_good_to_be_bored

In her TED Talk, "How Boredom Can Lead to Your Most Brilliant Ideas," Manoush Zomorodi argues how having very little to do and being bored can actually boast more creative discoveries than purposefully trying to be creative. First, she explains how she arrived at this discovery by noting that she took time off from her career as a journalist in 2007 to have her son. She notes that she went from being consistently busy to doing very little at all except for taking her son for walks in his stroller each day. Next, she states that when she finally did have time to sit down and brainstorm on how to start a podcast at home, no ideas came to her. She states that she attempted to think back to when she last had a good idea. She found that it wasn't when she was using her newly purchased iPhone to multitask, but it was when she was doing nothing more than pushing her son's stroller around, seemingly bored. As a result, she wondered what happens when humans are bored and she spoke to neuroscientist Dr. Daniel Levitin who told her that "every time you shift your attention from one thing to another, the brain has to engage a neurochemical switch that uses up nutrients in the brain to accomplish that. So if you're attempting to multitask, you know, doing four or five things at once, you're not actually doing four or five things at once, because the brain doesn't work that way. Instead, you're rapidly shifting from one thing to the next, depleting neural resources as you go" (Zomorodi). In other words, the human brain is mediocre at doing multiple things at once and better at just doing one thing at once. By attempting to multitask, Zomorodi found she was working too hard to do what her brain was better at when she was barely working. Finally, because she learned that being bored may be better for producing creative ideas, she set out to see if she could induce boredom by checking out of certain aspects of technology, especially the apps and sites that sucked up the most of her time. She also asked her podcast listeners to do it with her. After a week, participants reported to her that they had more time to think, slept better, and even felt happier.

Respond to the Source:
I absolutely agree with what Manoush Zomorodi argues in her TED Talk "How Boredom Can Lead to Your Most Brilliant Ideas." When neuroscientist Dr. Daniel Levitin states the human brain is not efficient at multitasking "because the brain doesn't work that way," I can absolutely find evidence of that in my own life (Zomorodi).  I would consider myself to be good at multitasking and I have to do it frequently at work, but I do find that some tasks aren't done as well when I am juggling multiple things. For example, I think of all of the times I have been mid-task and have had to stop and ask myself "What was I doing again?" Most of the time this happens, I am multitasking. To consider Zomorodi's point that creative ideas come out of boredom and not when we are trying to create them, I would say that I can relate to this as well. Whenever I have felt pressure to come up with something creative, I am not usually able to. It's when I am in the shower or lying down to go to sleep at night that suddenly an idea dawns on me. I know I'm not the only one who has this experience as I have frequently of this phenomenon from others. For instance, I once read that ideas for his films frequently come to Academy Award-winning director Steven Spielberg while he is driving.

Make connections:
I really enjoyed this cross pollination exercise because I purposefully looked for concepts that seemingly opposed my previous research. I searched for phrases such as "when creativity is bad," "opposite of creativity," and "boredom." I never would have thought that boredom and creativity could be linked together just as Manoush Zomorodi did when she asked "don't only boring people get bored?" (Zomorodi). I previously focused on the brains of creative people and whether it was nature or nurture that made people creative, why creativity seemed to wane as we age, and how companies could promote or stifle creativity, but I never thought to look at how creativity could come out of not being creative! Out of all of my sources, I think I felt the most personally connected to this one because I found that what happened to Zomorodi happens to me all the time. I also liked the accessibility of Zomorodi's concept of creativity--that ideas can appear for anyone and not just those that are more innately inclined. Overall, this is the direction I would continue to pursue, how everyone can take steps to be more creative just as Simone Gertz advocates when she suggests people should make useless things in her TED Talk.

Ask questions:
-Have you ever been doing a mundane task and a great idea suddenly came to you? If so, what were you doing and what was the idea?
-Do you think people are innately creative or do you think people can work at being more creative?
-Do you think you could live without multitasking, especially with a smart phone, for a week? How do you think you would feel after a week?

MLA Citation:
Zomorodi, Manoush. "How Boredom Can Lead to Your Most Brilliant Ideas." TED Talks. April. 2017. TED, https://www.ted.com/talks/manoush_zomorodi_how_boredom_can_lead_to_your_most_brilliant_ideas?referrer=playlist-why_it_s_sometimes_good_to_be_bored.

Attempt at APA Citation:
Zomorodi, M. (2017, April). How Boredom Can Lead to Your Most Brilliant Ideas [Video file]. Retrieved from https://www.ted.com/talks/manoush_zomorodi_how_boredom_can_lead_to_your_most_brilliant_ideas/footnotes?referrer=playlist-why_it_s_sometimes_good_to_be_bored]]> 2018-10-24 00:14:52 UTC https://padlet.com/sara_e_henson/swowhpzdu22l/wish/296235303 Where Do I Go From Here? sara_e_henson https://padlet.com/sara_e_henson/swowhpzdu22l/wish/296732867 My journey began with my Origin Story that described a moment I had growing up in which I first noticed that adults generally think differently than children. From this story, I begin my research to see if adults do indeed think differently and found the article "What Happens to Creativity as We Age?" by the University of California at Berkeley psychology professors Alison Gopnik and Tom Griffiths. It argues that adults use the information they have already learned through experience and exploration to problem solve, whereas children explore and try out new things to problem solve; therefore children tend to be more creative in their solutions. From there, I looked at the peer-reviewed journal "Secrets of the Creative Brain" by Nancy C. Andreasen which argues that people can be more biologically inclined toward creativity than others and that certain brain areas in creative people are more active than in noncreative people. Next, I looked at how companies can foster or stifle creativity in their employees in the article "Breaking Paradigms for Creativity and Success" by Revathi Turaga. Lastly, I attempted cross-pollination of ideas and sought out topics that seemed to be the opposite of creativity, and I landed on the topic of boredom. I found the TED Talk "How Boredom Can Lead to Your Most Brilliant Ideas" by Manoush Zomorodi. This TED Talk explains, with the help of neuroscience, that multitasking is actually taking up brainpower and preventing creativity. Zomorodi explains that doing nothing and purposefully seeking out boredom can actually bring about great ideas.

This cross-pollination exercise interestingly brought me back to an earlier piece of my research, the TED Talk "Why You Should Make Useless Things" by Simone Giertz. I feel that both of these talks have one major thing in common--that anyone can attempt to be more creative. This is the direction I find most fascinating and hopeful. Moreover, this is the direction I would continue to pursue. I took Mrs. Lew's advice in her comment and checked out Elizabeth Gilbert's TED Talk "Your Elusive Creative Genius." I liked when she examined "being a genius" versus "having a genius" and felt that part of the point she was trying to make is that anyone can have genius moments and be more creative (Gilbert). Additionally, an anonymous comment on my post on "Secrets of the Creative Brain" suggested Carol Dweck's research on Growth and Fixed Mindsets that indicates that if someone is not creative, it's just that they're not creative yet. I couldn't agree more!

Works Cited:
Gilbert, Elizabeth. "Your Elusive Creative Genius." TED Talks. February. 2009. TED, https://www.ted.com/talks/elizabeth_gilbert_on_genius?language=en]]> 2018-10-25 01:01:49 UTC https://padlet.com/sara_e_henson/swowhpzdu22l/wish/296732867