[3900] in Depressing_Thoughts
Re: creativity
lavin@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (lavin@ATHENA.MIT.EDU)
Thu Jun 17 15:22:22 1993
In my experience, MIT can be the kind of place that squashes the
creativity right out of a person. When I was in high school, I
sketched almost constantly, wrote poems, short stories, all sorts of
stuff. After a year or two here, I realized I hadn't picked up my
sketchpad more than two or three times, hadn't written a single poem,
nothing. The workload of this place and the pace just made it really
hard to set aside some time to "play." And I developed a reflex that
stopped me from following up on any tangential thoughts or ideas --
who has time to do anything more than what they're asking on the
problem set? This reflex oozed over to creative impulses, too, I
found.
But I forced myself to make time to take a few classes with the
Student Art Association -- random things, didn't matter, just to keep
myself doing something -- and made a very conscious effort to work on
just a few projects each summer. Doing this, I discovered that all
those creative impulses weren't really *gone*, they were just buried,
and given a little attention and time, could come back. So I let them
be buried for a while, and after I graduated, started spending the
time, and they came back! Somewhat changed, granted, and I found new
types of creative hings I was interested in, but the urge and ability
resurfaced.
This doesn't make it much easier to bear while you're actually going
through it, but at least you can keep reminding yourself that someday
you'll have the time to do all those things. And you also have to
avoid comparing yourself to anyone -- there are, miraculously, people
around here who simultaneously zoom through their classes, captain
varsity sports teams, write novels and win art prizes. But I think
maybe they're aliens, sent here to study us under stress. :)
There's a very interesting book I found called "The Artist's Way" (the
name of the author is escaping me, but I can look it up) which has
some good stuff to say about all this, particularly about ways to
encourage creativity. I recommend it.
