March 20, 2005

• topic: my constipated mind

  
  

  I’m working on an article…the upcoming Polical Review paper at Wash U. has the theme “welcome to the bubble” apparently inspired by my last article.  Just when i think…I’ve gotten no feedback, so i’m gonna drop worrying about it, I get the positive feedback, and a 24hr. deadline to write.  so i’m scrambling now, but I’m trying to find a tone, more than a topic.  something inspiring and informative is usually my thing, but i’m not feeling very informative.  here’s what i’ve scratched together.

  
  

  I’m only about 5-10min. from the Rocky steps of the Philly art museum, gonna wander for the afternoon, find a nice coffee shop or something to doze off in, and come back to finish this tonight:

  
  

  Lateral Thinking – A Laxative for the Constipated Mind

  
  

   

  
  

              I’m staring at the blinking dash on the screen, indicating, “keep typing you son-of-a-bitch.”  Writers block, or rather, writers flood.  Scratch that… “thinkers flood.”  We’re thinkers first, writers second.

  
  

              A friend of mine once commented on how my writing had improved since college.  Strange, considering I haven’t taken any writing classes since college, since I haven’t had the benefits of workshops, or the red pen to aid my writing.  My “writing skills” actually have not changed since college.  My thinking has changed, in two important ways.

  
  

              The first is I’ve discovered (a personal discovery that may not apply to any world outside of my own), that there are no rules to writing.  No rules to thinking.  There’s only tools and strategies with different goals in mind.  The biggest strategy we’re taught in school is to consider our audience.  Think about this…as a student, how often do we insert a student voice to appeal to a professor’s ears?  With a limited audience, we limit both our thinking and writing.  We build a bubble.

  
  

              After truly recognizing the anguish caused when students have been bubblized, I came across its alleviant, known as “lateral thinking,” also referred to as thinking outside the box.  Perhaps “bursting the bubble,” is a more proper metaphor here.  Edward de Bono, who coined the term lateral thinking, has written extensively about the numerous political problems our society faces, however, he is less interested in their causes than our inability to think our way through them.  His work addressed our inability as a society, or perhaps our unwillingness, to re-think some of our basic assumptions and to recognize the need for new solutions to timeless problems. 

  
  

              In my last article, I noted how several national organizations that study higher education have revealed a disconnect between what colleges teach, and what students need for their lives.  These organizations acknowledged the general feelings amongst students nationwide that college is merely a collection of disjointed classes that tally up to a diploma.  What they failed to conclude, but is fairly evident, is that colleges do not teach students how to solve real-world problems.       

  
  

              What do we mean when we speak of the Wash U bubble?  What is the real value behind this phrase, and its connotation of “not goodness.”  The way I see it, having had nearly two years to reflect on my four inside the bubble, is that the physical and cultural environment of college imposes boundaries on how we think and perceive things.  For example, I’ll share some of my own experience, which does not apply to all, but many indicators reveal mine to be a generalized experience.

  
  

              Thanks to the internet and weblogs, we have a whole new way of collectively alleviating our mental constipation.  We also have a new way of addressing the problems the de Bono aptly described as “mental masturbation,” that occurs inside the college bubble.     

  
  

   

  • 12:03 pm
  • 1 Comment