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My Opinions on School // Creativity
An article by: Brady Johnson
Published: November 8th, 2021 I was never the best student in high school. I always tried to be the hardest worker but there were smarter and more talented kids than me in every class. I always cared about the grade that I was getting in my classes, a failing grade was something that could ruin my week.
School was hard though, I actually had to study and try in every one of my classes. If I did not study for that anatomy test that I had coming up, I would fail.
Then the Coronavirus hit.
Everything changed and the way myself and others approach school would never be the same. Those last 4 months of my senior year of high school on a computer were quite actually a joke. So much so I started a landscaping business with my friends and we made some money on the side during the school week. But it was not the teacher's fault, to be thrown into that situation with no prior experience of how to handle online schooling, nearly impossible. I have to say though, I still feel that even today, school is no where near where it used to be in terms of difficulty.
The first year of college for me fall 2020- spring 2021 was, for the most part, a waste of money. I received the credits necessary and that was about it. I did not learn really a single thing about anything from a single one of my classes. I didn't study and all the answers to the worksheets that I had were a button tap away.
I was at Springfield College, in person, for the first two months, by myself in a dorm room with not a single friend, anywhere within a 50 mile radius. But it was good for me. It was what I needed, and I used that time to figure out who I really wanted to be in life. I went home right around October 30th because we had a covid breakthrough. At the time I was just recently a week out of surgery so it was very hard for me to get around campus, and the mental burden of not being able to move around was taking a toll. As soon as I got home from campus I set myself up to get after it. School still sucked, it was more of a chore than anything else, it was hard to motivate myself to do even the simplest of tasks. I checked my grades towards the end of that fall semester and saw that I was actually doing a lot better than I had anticipated. This was not a good thing for me. It allowed me to keep doing bare minimum knowing that I would still get a decent grade.
With the lack of academic education came an opportunity for a self education and self exploration. I was able to read more than ever, I was able to take up guitar, I was able to start learning Italian, and most of all I started to write a lot more than I ever did before. But not everyone is like me and not everyone was using their new free time to dabble with productive tasks. Most people would just take their easy 1 hour online class and be done for the day, that is a destructive way of thinking, you got to learn to go the extra mile with your own life.
So here I am, at Umass Amherst almost done with my first semester of my sophomore year, and what have I learned? My manager over the summer asked me if I was going to school this fall and I said yes, I told her I was going to learn more about myself, not necessarily to work on my education. I have learned a lot about myself I can not lie, I have a lot of flaws. As far as education goes, I don't feel more book smart.
But let's break it down, what does it truly mean to be educated. Education in my mind is all about learning useful skills that will help you grow as a person. While it is very important to have a degree from college, it is also about having that intangible degree in life. I have met plenty of people who do not have a college degree and still have do well in life. Some are built for school and others are built for the real world.
Creativity
Creativity is freedom to be a free thinker and form different opinions, to use to your imagination to get there.
My opinion: Society suppresses creative minds and doesn't allow for people to form their own opinions and be their true self.
How often during the day are our minds truly free? In this fast paced life of ours, our minds hardly have the time to run free and be let loose. The most important years of your life are from the ages of 8-22, this is where we learn how to interact in the world and most of us figure out our reason for being put on this earth. I like to link individual thinking with creativity. And when it comes to individual thinking I think we are in a drought.
Individual thinking allows people to form their own opinions without prior knowledge of how something is done. In my opinion social media tends to suppress individual thinking. Someone sees one person's opinion on social media and they don't allow themselves to think about what their opinion is first.
I saw this one quote on an article that was put out by INC that really resonated with me. It went like this, "When you compare yourself with others, you rob yourself of your own unique innovation and imagination. Set your own standards of creativity and don't compare yourself with anyone else. Allow yourself to create and be different. The only unique contribution you can ever make in this world will be born of your creativity."
Think about that quote, I am not going to analyze it because if you have read it I want you to form your own opinion and not base yours off of my thoughts.
Creativity is not something that everyone is born with, but it is something that everyone can gain as they go throughout life. I firmly believe that my creative side of my brain was limited until about 2 years ago when I decided to make a conscious effort to improve my mental health. Sometimes all it takes to improve creativity is to stop thinking for a minute. Put down your phone, shut your laptop, and forget everything. Just think about nothing and you might find out something new about yourself.
Peace and love as always,
Brady
https://www.inc.com/lolly-daskal/8-bad-habits-that-destroy-your-creativity.html