What's your Element?
I can't remember what college application essays ask you to write about. At some point in senior year of high school, students applying to college are asked what major they're thinking about. Thinking in terms of majors is really the wrong way of thinking about a college education. Unfortunately, many of our education decisions are based on taxonomies that have been created for purposes that are no longer valid. The decision about a major is something forced upon students as necessary to build up the right credits in a particular focus area in order to graduate. Instead, seniors should be encouraged to reflect upon the following question: "What is your element?" And, if you're not sure what your element is, "How are you planning to look for it?"
I've been reading The Element: How Finding Your Passion Changes Everything, by Sir Ken Robinson. I came to this book via his TED talk (Ken Robinson Says Schools Kill Creativity), which constitutes the first chapter of the book. He's a great speaker, there's no doubt about that, and the book is an easy read, full of stories of people who have found their element at some point in their life -- and often not particularly early in their life. It's a book that would have a certain appeal to anyone who has found his/her element. On the other hand, if you haven't found your element or you haven't been able to define it sufficiently well, the book is short on advice about how to find it.
Often, the most interesting books are those able to make you think about your own circumstances. They allow you to make new connections between your experience and that of others. A few things in The Element stuck for me (.. to me):
1. Imagination is not the same as creativity.
Creativity is essentially "applied imagination". You can have a lot of imagination but if you don't do anything with it, it's just in your head and you're not sharing it with anyone. I've spent many, many years in the imagination world, with stories in my head that never made it to the paper and never had any kind of "application." I don't think there's anything wrong with that but I'm now interested in applied imagination... turning this capacity for story making into something that can be shared with others. I'm also interested in combining that with what I've learned over the years as a professional.
2. Once people discover their element, they need to find their tribe.
The tribe is essentially a group of people, a community that shares the same passion and/or understand each others' passions. They're a necessary support group. I definitely have not found my tribe. I didn't grow up in an environment that was particularly supportive of what I was doing. I don't think my family knew what I was doing since most of it was happening in my head and I developed a habit of destroying whatever I did write down on paper.
For more about tribes, see also Seth Godin's book, Tribes and his TED Talk "Seth Godin and the Tribes We Lead," although Godin and Robinson are talking of tribes in slightly different ways.
3. Your element doesn't have to become your work
If your work is boring and you can't wait to get out of the office to do what you really like to do, then work is just about "making a living". In the book, Ken Robinson talks about a number of people who's work is not their primary passion but who have managed to combine a rewarding professional career with their passion.
I've thought about quitting my job to take on writing as a full time job on a few instances I can count these instances on the fingers of one hand. I've never been sufficiently dissatisfied with my work situation to consider it seriously and I've been fortunate enough to carve enough time in my life to do the writing on the side. When these thoughts reemerge, I remind myself that it would not be as fun to write full time and try to make a living out of it. There would be too much pressure to come up with publishable quality text. At this point I'd rather remain an amateur. The alternative explanation is that I'm a chicken.
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I've been reading The Element: How Finding Your Passion Changes Everything, by Sir Ken Robinson. I came to this book via his TED talk (Ken Robinson Says Schools Kill Creativity), which constitutes the first chapter of the book. He's a great speaker, there's no doubt about that, and the book is an easy read, full of stories of people who have found their element at some point in their life -- and often not particularly early in their life. It's a book that would have a certain appeal to anyone who has found his/her element. On the other hand, if you haven't found your element or you haven't been able to define it sufficiently well, the book is short on advice about how to find it.
Often, the most interesting books are those able to make you think about your own circumstances. They allow you to make new connections between your experience and that of others. A few things in The Element stuck for me (.. to me):
1. Imagination is not the same as creativity.
Creativity is essentially "applied imagination". You can have a lot of imagination but if you don't do anything with it, it's just in your head and you're not sharing it with anyone. I've spent many, many years in the imagination world, with stories in my head that never made it to the paper and never had any kind of "application." I don't think there's anything wrong with that but I'm now interested in applied imagination... turning this capacity for story making into something that can be shared with others. I'm also interested in combining that with what I've learned over the years as a professional.
2. Once people discover their element, they need to find their tribe.
The tribe is essentially a group of people, a community that shares the same passion and/or understand each others' passions. They're a necessary support group. I definitely have not found my tribe. I didn't grow up in an environment that was particularly supportive of what I was doing. I don't think my family knew what I was doing since most of it was happening in my head and I developed a habit of destroying whatever I did write down on paper.
For more about tribes, see also Seth Godin's book, Tribes and his TED Talk "Seth Godin and the Tribes We Lead," although Godin and Robinson are talking of tribes in slightly different ways.
3. Your element doesn't have to become your work
If your work is boring and you can't wait to get out of the office to do what you really like to do, then work is just about "making a living". In the book, Ken Robinson talks about a number of people who's work is not their primary passion but who have managed to combine a rewarding professional career with their passion.
I've thought about quitting my job to take on writing as a full time job on a few instances I can count these instances on the fingers of one hand. I've never been sufficiently dissatisfied with my work situation to consider it seriously and I've been fortunate enough to carve enough time in my life to do the writing on the side. When these thoughts reemerge, I remind myself that it would not be as fun to write full time and try to make a living out of it. There would be too much pressure to come up with publishable quality text. At this point I'd rather remain an amateur. The alternative explanation is that I'm a chicken.
Labels: Creativity, Education, Fiction, Ken Robinson, Seth Godin, TED
posted by Barbara Fillip at
9:12 AM
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