I myself am playdoh. Over the holiday break I noticed how much of my Ann Arbor friend’s lingo I had picked up, and no longer blended with the conversational patterns of my high school friends the way I used to. Being around other people, I pick up traits and mannerisms that I wouldn’t normally portray. This leads to a life that is constantly changing and shifting and I like it that way. I want to be anything but stagnant. Creativity is a huge part of me and I don’t want all of my math and science and logic based classes to push that out of me. I have a huge appreciation for art, and a personal artistic side that also changes. One week I love making collages, another I make 50 intricate paper snowflakes, I knit and paint and doodle and play guitar; there are endless ways to express this creativity and I cant stand to hold it inside. The majority of my hobbies involve some kind of creative/ expressive base where I’m not necessarily trying make a statement with my piece, but it’s inherent in my nature to want to make something, regardless. I know some people that could never do another craft or art project in their life and that would be their ideal state, but that would be like prison to me. This class is going to be a bit like a directed means of me making time to express myself throughout this next semester. Being in engineering, I have ENGR 101 (Computer Programming), MATH 115 (Calc 1), ENVIRON 201 (Environmental Issues), and an independent study with my former ENGR 100 teacher so we can implement designs we made last semester. That’s 13 credits of science/ logic classes. On top of that I have a 1 credit required course because of a social justice Learning Community that I live in, and this 4 credit creativity “elective” type class. Currently, I’m unsure if I am going to continue with the class. It is lovely and exciting and I would love to keep it, but as of right now I have 18 credits and I have heard that can be a bit overwhelming. Plus, my family might need me to start working to contribute paying for my education, so I definitely would have to drop the class if that were the case. But I feel that I have so much to learn from this class. Creativity and innovation is such an important part of engineering, I dont understand why it’s not stressed more. I have talked with one of my engineering professors who is the head of the board for scheduling what classes freshmen engineer students have to take. I think you are going to be able to find an infinite amount of analytical, logical, smart students who can memorize their physics formulas and chem constants, but what is going to be beneficial in the real world is innovation. If all you can do is spew values that were taught to you, you’re not contributing new, fresh ideas to your field, and therefore are not an essential peice of it. We have textbooks for that. But even our most complex computer programs cant think the way that the human mind can, and we need to hear everyone’s ideas. It would be interesting if one day a class like UARTS 250 was required for engineers. I wonder if they would see a difference in the students? I have personally always loved biological science, have been good at math, but also have had a strong appreciation for the arts. I try to understand people who are either technical OR art enthusiasts, but I’m sure I only understand them to a point. ON A PERSONAL RANT, I’m still debating whether I want to be an engineer anymore. My original reason for trying this was to be able to apply my passion and inherent knack for science and creativity to help others solve problems in the world. This is still my goal, but I’m seeing less and less of the creativity that I expected to come out during our project models and presentations. In a class last semester I did some research on a topic called biomimicry, which is using nature as it currently exists as blueprints to fix problems that are occuring with human-created processes, or just to make working processes more efficient. My faith plays a large peice into this, and I see the world with great appreciation. I am a Christian that believes the world was deliberately made for us by the Lord, and his creations are perfect. Using this as my basis for logic, wouldnt it make sense to use the perfect model as inspiration for objects or processes that we have to make? Why would we make up something on our own? There’s somehting out there that is PERFECT and works the best than something can, and instead of using this to our advantage, we use our egoism to justify doing things our way. Anyways, I would love to study the form/ function relationships in nature, and put that into a website database that others could access, or supply that information to a consulting company to help other companies make their actions have a lower environmental impact. I’m extremely happy to see all of the “green” initiatives that this world is making, but I feel there is much more we can do to increase the level of sustainability that we are living at. I have heard that there was a professor in the School of Natural Resources and the Environment who is working on creating an Ecological Engineering, that would include biomimicry and many other initiatives to create a more sustainable future, but she has not replied to my email inquiring about the timeline for this project, if I could contribute in any way, or what courses I should take in the future so that when this is made, I can declare it as my major without having to take a lot of extra courses. I’m rambling too much, I’m sorry. I’ll end this post before I write a novel.
January 5, 2011
