I think one of my greatest strengths this semester has been the ability to embrace ambiguity. I was able to really embrace this idea, and apply it to all sorts of different challenges throughout the semester in this class and outside of it. In this class, I have accepted that ambiguity is a part of the design process, and learned to use it to my advantage. After experiences in this class like the mindmaps, or creating something out of things in your room, I’ve learned to be able to design something without knowing what I’m going to have as a final product. Ambiguity allows for an evolution to happen with your design where you don’t know what you will have before you start, but rather create on the fly and finish with a product you are happy with.
I’ve learned from this that I can be a creative person through these experiences. I never was the type of student to plan out a project before doing it, and I would always feel like I did a poor job because of it- I would focus on the negatives, and I’d associate these negatives with not planning out the project before hand. But I’ve realized that by embracing this ambiguity that I can use it to my advantage. I can plan to not know, and by doing this I can create my best work because I’ve built every part on already made parts.
I think a habit that comes to me naturally would be failing forward. I don’t think I’ve never been one to quit things because I’m not good at them. The best example is running. When I was in middle school and early high school, I sucked at running and I’d always get my ass kicked in races and be on the jv team. But I really wanted to improve, and make the varsity team, so I would work harder after a bad race and I’d try to improve even though I sucked and I was far from being one of the better runners on the team. Eventually I improved to the point where I was one of the best runners on the team.
I’d love to work on my child’s eye in the future, especially when it comes to ideas. I’ve always wanted to do something entrepreneurial at some point, and in order to come up with a million dollar idea, it’s essential that I train my child’s eye to find places where a million dollar idea can be implemented. I’m currently working with What’s Good in Boston, which is a small business that sources food from local farms and allows surrounding residents to order groceries from a variety of local vendors through one source. The company was founded because the founders identified that you couldn’t do this, and they decided to make a solution. When you hear about what entrepreneurs do, it always seems like an obvious idea, but you need a very well trained child’s eye to think of something like that.
I want to start focusing on more mundane issues with my life that I wouldn’t usually focus on, and I want to clearly identify these problems. They don’t have to be anything drastic, but maybe notice that they exist, and then think of ridiculous ways to solve these problems. They don’t have to be practical, but they can be if I can think of one. After I wrote that I just realized that we did that with the apple picker exercise, and moving forward, I want to start doing that more, and eventually I want that to become a serious habit.
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