Looking at the semester in a reflective state has opened my eyes to how often I’ve embraced some of these habits without even knowing it. When we discussed childs eye it reminded me that perspective is very important when trying to understand the purpose behind something. When we did those activities like creating items with stuff we can find in our room it really made me think outside the box and channel a part of me that I had not unlocked for some tim It’s a great habit to practice because it reminds me that there can be many interpretations and understandings from a certain situation and looking at the big picture can provide more clarity in many cases. Failing forward is something I’ve also embraced because it provides reassurance that I know I can bounce back from a tough time/situation. Acknowledging the faults made in the past and being motivated to keep trying is a hard process to embrace because it can difficult to stay focused when you’re only seeing the bad. However, without failure there can’t be room for success as all success stories began with failure. 

I’ve learned that the journey to becoming who you want to be and what you want to do is a process you need to fall in love with. Falling in love with the process can help you achieve a sense of reassurance in your own abilities and that’s an important part of life. I’d say that embracing ambiguity has been a habit that’s come natural to me because we never know what life will throw at us, but having faith in yourself can help you break out of a tough time that your in.

One habit I want to continue to work on is failing forward as it teaches a you a lot about yourself and how you react to adversity. Taking the steps to figure out what went wrong is important, but when you begin to appreciate that process you won’t feel as let down when failure occurs.  In addition, creative thinking is a habit I will continue to work on as it can be one of the biggest tools throughout my time at Bucknell. Similar to child’s eye, having creative confidence can help you think and see things in ways unseen before. When facing adversity it can be tough to have confidence in your ability to overcome, but being creative and trying new ways to approach things can guide you to pathes you would’ve never thought could appear. These are all practices I want to work on and continue to learn about as they will be significant in not only my MIDE journey, but the remaining two years I’m at Bucknell.

Though it’s effect on me didn’t rub off fully until we were settled into quarantine, some of our discussions and virtually every assignment we did in the class was to make us more comfortable with embracing ambiguity. At the beginning, I was very skeptical and frankly was bewildered when I wasn’t being given specific instructions for assignments. I felt like maybe I wasn’t understanding the material, or MIDE just wasn’t for me. Then I realized, the whole point of the ambiguity wasn’t to confuse us but to make us more comfortable with thinking outside the box and interpreting assignments and events in our own way. The quarantine we’re experiencing right now uses the work we did in class and takes it to another level. From when I wake up in the morning to when I go to sleep, virtually none of the things I do now are set specifically on a schedule for me to follow (aside from the obvious like showering, brushing teeth and feeding the cat, etc.) While a lot of my peers went the route of trying to set their schedules and attempted to follow it to a T, the one I created for one of my models was an ambiguous representation of my day. It’s supposed to serve as a guide for how I could spend my day. The lack of structure that exists from day to day is a lot like the work we did in class, in that we get to interpret the instructions (or in my case the schedule) in a way we see fit while adhering to simple guidelines (which in this case are the specifically listed things I have to do every day.)

Of the habits we learned and practiced, honing my child’s eye is definitely what I want to improve next. That exercise where we walked all around campus and reconvened at the 7^th St Cafe to report on what aspects of campus we noticed for the first time made me notice just how little I’m taking in when I’m mobile. When making an effort to see things through an inquisitive lens, it becomes possible to not only realize things for the first time but learn and make new deductions about things we’ve seen before as well. I’m of the belief that getting into the habit of using child’s eye is what allows us to see the very first step of the design process (defining the problem). By questioning everything I see like I’m seeing it for the first time, I might come to understand how I can innovate on some design to improve it, or even design something new. At home, I’ve been trying to improve it by doing the same exercise we did in school. Because I don’t spend much time at my dad’s house, a lot of the things both inside and outside are unfamiliar to me. To further improve this skill, I’m making it a point to hang on every word my dad says to see if he subtly mentions something about the house. As of now, the one thing I’ve gathered from him is that he hates how he’s always bending over to get new pots and pans. Though it was a remark made in passing, my child’s eye tells me it’s very possible for me to make him a rack for all his things, or if I’m feeling particularly audacious, even try to hang said rack from the ceiling.

I’ll go out on a limb and admit failing forward is what I excel at. I have no shame in it, and what I’ve learned is that it gets easier to accept failure the more times you mess up. I don’t necessarily believe it’s a good thing to be amazing at it since when one mess up in grand fashion (we all do it), the person will just move on without any introspection about what they could have done differently leading to the same mistakes over and over. On the other end of the spectrum, one who has one small mess up might dwell on it instead of learning and moving forward. This creates a mentally unhealthy state where the person will have no confidence since their creativity, they feel, was said to not be good enough. To find a happy medium where I can learn from my mistakes without dwelling on my failure, I found it helps to have a conversation with whoever was on the other end. I implemented that strategy with the friend I talked about in class who got in trouble because I wasn’t being observant. Needless to say, we spoke for over an hour and what happened doesn’t weigh nearly as heavy on my conscience now. Because I embraced my failure and instead of shelling up, we were able to hash out strategies to effectively prevent the incident from happening to anyone else in the future.

In my life, before and even at times during this course, embracing ambiguity and creative confidence had an interesting dynamic in which they tended to work against each other. Naturally, when undergoing a creation or design process of something, I grow a bias towards my personal work. After all, it was my mind that decided what course of action to take that would be best for tackling the situation, and so I hold a stake in those choices. So when it came to accepting others’ alternative routes of creation, I would look for ways to critique their work. It was difficult for me to be open towards counteracting ideas and to understand other’s mindsets. However, this course has shown me how both of these habits can effectively work together. 

Embracing ambiguity played a significant role in all of the group work and exercises we performed this semester. Partnering up to share our mind map concepts allowed us to hear the opinion’s and insight of others. Even just walking around the classroom to view each others’ creations practiced a form of embracing ambiguity; we all executed the prompt differently and it was interesting to see other interpretations of the assignment. In terms of the mind-maps where their were several different iterations that progressed throughout the semester, observing how others modeled their maps proved to be beneficial in spurring new approaches to tackling the assignment. I begun to place a greater emphasis on the visual aspect of the maps: creating color schemes, emphasizes symmetry, and even displaying my drawing skills or lack there of.  In some creations, however, such as the tea light or the key hanger, embracing ambiguity prior to designing your own creating was frowned upon. In my opinion, not having an example to work off of makes the assignment more interesting and exciting to tackle.

In these creations, child’s eye observation played a significant role. One might look at an empty tissue box and an old coffee cup and think, “how am I going to create anything with this garbage laying around in my room?” But perhaps a child would play around with the items and realize that the cup fits perfectly into the top of the tissue box. This is an example of how I manifested the child’s eye observation in my room creation.

Failing forward and creative confidence also share an interesting dynamic and can be tied to another habit that I feel as though the design challenge has encouraged: embracing change and adjustments. In my design challenge, I thought that I would be drop-shipping electronic accessories and reselling clothing items in a similar fashion in which my eBay store was developed upon. However, different shipping and availability conditions have transpired since my previous endeavors so I was forced to change my eBay project’s agenda. My new listings proved to be successful and have prompted another new development to my project; I now have more capital to invest and a new drop-shipping opportunity because of the changes I made to my original plan. This manifests the importance of getting an idea going, without spending too much time overthinking the design to get it perfect, because it will be changed at some point along the design process as you move from step to step.

This ties into what I have learned about myself through this process in term of failing forward. Although my sneaker listing hasn’t spurred much interest as of late regarding the item itself, I received a new partnership opportunity. In this sense it’s important to understand that “where one door closes another door opens” but that door will not open until you put your feet in the water.

In the past couple years, I have noticed that I tend to be afraid of failure, even in something as simple as speaking up in class. Being able to communicate with others effectively is a habit that, while not exactly central to MIDE 300, is crucial to group projects that entail the design process. The professors did a good job eliciting students to provide insights to the discussion. One thing I wish I could go back and change about my performance in class is not being scared of being wrong and adding more to the class discussion. I think this class proved to be an environment that encouraged people to talk. The presentations we performed throughout the course helped practice verbally communicating our designs. One way I am looking to practice this skill is by taking a public speaking course next semester. I am facing my fear of sounding stupid when opening my mouth by joining an environment in which my perceived act of sounding unintelligent is actually making strives to improving myself.

Going into this semester I thought I knew what MIDE was but I was very pleased to actually get to experience a MIDE class for the first time. Over the course we covered various habits that make up an innovative character. The two that stuck out to me were childs eye and embracing ambiguity.

These two habits stuck out to me for different reasons.
Childs Eye stook out to me because it has been something I had already noticed in my own life. Since I was young I have coached a lacrosse camp for kids ages five through fifteen. After camp I would babysat my younger cousins each day. This allowed for me to really get to see how children grapple with life. I was able to pick up on a child’s eye on my own so learning about how we as adults need to put in the extra attention to maintain a childs eye made a lot of sense to me. In particular, the walk around campus was an eye opening activity and I have tried to do similar activities with just myself more often. It showed me how we often go through the motions of life without picking up on little details or asking questions. Driving through my neighborhood with my little cousin means hundreds of “whys?” And “how come?” from the back seat. This class has shown me that so much good can come from questioning things, and we all need to work on restoring our childs eye. 

Embracing ambiguity also stood out to me. This was not because I had already thought about it like I had for Child’s Eye but because it was a new concept that I knew I should work on getting better at instituting in my own life. I find that in all my classes I want to know the rubric, the checklist, or the to do list. The design process has shown me that some unknown can lead to better outcomes. Ambiguity is still mildly uncomfortable for me and I think it will continue to be but my perspective on that uncomfortable feeling has changed. I have learned that facing ambiguity in a positive way can change the outcome and how I feel about it. Currently, we are all faced with a large amount of ambiguity as we are unsure of when our normal daily life will go back to normal. I have challenged myself to maintain a positive outlook on this situation so that my day to day life in quarantine will feel better. 

Overall, this course has made me think in new ways that I know I will carry with me beyond this course. I have already noticed myself bringing in tidbits of information into conversations with my friends and family. This not only makes me realize my interest in the topic but that it is also relevant and useful information.

I feel as though the habit that played the biggest role in my life this semester was embracing ambiguity. I have never been one to do well under limited constraints or vague instructions. I live and die by structure in everything I do in my life, I need to have a set schedule with everything planned out during my day so I follow it to a T and accomplish everything I need to. Also when it comes to an assignment or just a task I have to do in life I am person who needs to know the exact details of what needs to be done and in what why so I have clear idea of what is right or what’s wrong. It’s almost comparable to the design attitude vs. the decision attitude. In those the design attitude embraces all possible designs and avenues to choose from while decision is just about option 1 or 2. In my life I feel like I need option 1 or 2 and how to do each one and which one is right to seek that approval that I am on the right track. However, this semester has opened my eyes to the ability to embrace the unknown of what my final product will be and to realize that there is more than one avenue to take during an assignment. I have learned embrace ambiguity starting in the classroom, especially on the assignments such as mind maps and our creations with the tea lights and ultimately our final design project. I found myself trying to constantly email professor Allen or Smith or ask my classmates what they think was expected for the assignment because I couldn’t work without knowing if my final product was right. I eventually began to become more comfortable with becoming more creative and not worrying whether or not my creation was “right”. This let my creative outlet grow because I was able to start to produce some things that were out of the box like my in home gym and become okay with taking a different path than others knowing that it was just my creative path. ambiguity allowed me to break through the need for constraints in my life in general as well, allowing me to be more spontaneous with activities I did, and especially with my leadership on the football field. There isn’t one set manual on how to lead, so I thought I had to emulate leaders I saw before me. I learned that I don’t need to constrain myself to how they lead, I can learn how to lead on my own and the best way I see fit.

I would say failing forward comes most naturally to me because I have learned a lot from the mistakes in my life. I feel as though if you come from a sports background you are bound to have this property because it is just a part of any game to mess up at something and learn how to do it the right way to succeed. This has led me to embrace being wrong on an assignment in class better and taking the feedback given to improve my design on the next projects, especially with the mind maps. Failing never has put me down, it has always been a way for me to learn how to do things the right way. So it was pretty easy to accept that my designs weren’t perfect or my answers weren’t always right because I felt as thought it would help shape how to do things right for the rest of the class.

The habit I want to work on the most is my creative confidence. I have never considered myself a very creative person, especially in terms of artistic abilities. I feel as though my lack of artistic abilities hinders me from thinking that I can be creative when it comes to design processes because I have a fear in the back of my mind that someone will be better. It limits me to only creating very simple things that I believe will be “right” instead of trying to push the creative boundaries.Things like the brainstorming activity, mind maps, and creations didn’t come easily at all because I wasn’t confident enough to really step outside of the box and think of something interesting or improve on my idea,I just went for purpose and really getting the job done. A way I can practice growing in respect to this habit is by allowing myself to push the boundaries of creativity in everything that I do. I won’t stop at making just one and final version of creation, I will make two to three to really let my thoughts grow and figure different ways to improve besides what I think is “right”. I will also working trying to block out my inability of creating good art and realizing I can still be creative without doing so. I will practice finding different pathways and pushing myself to not just stop when I think I have “completed” something, yet constantly look to think outside the box and improve.

Lastly, building an innovative character for me is all about not holding myself and seeing things from multiple perspectives. This class has helped me step outside of my comfort zone on multiple occasions, especially with the inspiration posts. I feel as though I have felt myself grow from just a person who follows the rules and creates what should be done to figuring out what my best work looks like and having the freedom and confidence to make this happen. The different ways I’ve been pushed to this has helped me evolve into a person that is more innovative in aspects of life outside of school and has really shown me the multitude of different ways I can go about doing certain tasks. It will be crucial for me to grow on this quality and embrace this ambiguous world by lifting the constraints I am constantly putting on my life.

I believe that the habit of embracing ambiguity has tremendously helped and applied in other classes of mine, specifically Introduction to Women’s & Gender Studies and my first finance course (MGMT 203). In my gender studies course, our major assignments had very vague prompts and we had a lot of free reign. While many in my class were overwhelmed by the options, it felt freeing to know that there were many different avenues that my papers could go down. Similarly in my finance course, my group had very vague outlines of what each of our presentations were going to look like. By collaborating together, we were able to determine what aspects of the company would fit the best into a story for each presentation. Without this course, doing so would have been much more difficult. This habit came naturally to me since, ever since I was young, I always was one to be pushing the boundaries when it came to assignments. I find that I work better with some freedoms rather than rigid guidelines since my ideas can develop further.

I have learned a lot about myself when it comes to child’s eye and hyper observation. I noticed that I don’t take in the little things in my every day life. Instead I speed through routines and don’t let what happens to me sink it. I have found it very therapeutic to make myself slow down and notice the little things going on around me. While hyper observation doesn’t come as easy to me, it is something that I want to work on this most. This habit is the most rewarding because it not only inspires me for projects, but it re-centers me when I feel overwhelmed in my daily life. Especially in the current climate, it is easy for me to feel overwhelmed by the news and the possibility of me or a loved one getting sick. Looking at everything during my walks with my dog at home are a way for me to feel more at peace at this time in my life.

The habit I want to work on the most is failing forward. For that assignment, I felt like my failures weren’t strong enough for me to feel like I fail forward. I still think about grades in courses, and I fear not doing well on assignments, reflecting on my GPA. I believe that the way I was raised was to avoid failure at all costs, so it is going to take more practice getting comfortable with failure for me to accept it as a tool to move forward.

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.

Throughout my semester in this course, I have embraced ambiguity and tried to adapt to creative confidence as well. Creative confidence is something that I think is necessary in almost all aspects of life, where being confident and creative separately are crucial. Creative confidence is important as it can push a designer forward to think outside of the box and more creatively. Being able to be confident in your own thoughts and ideas can be hard, and this was something I struggled with. Especially speaking towards the design process, I had to think of something creative that would be enough for me throughout the time in quarantine. This habit of creative confidence was crucial for this design process because of the way I had to brainstorm and continue to build off of my ideas throughout the semester. From the design process and creative confidence specifically, I have found that I need to push myself to go with what I think is best for me personally.

            On top of the design process, the assignments we were given while on campus were often vague and ambiguous on purpose. Combining the ambiguity and the creative confidence, I had to be confident in my ability to find a solution to the ambiguous tasks that were given to us. When I was sometimes unsure of what I should be doing for a certain assignment, it was important that I stuck with what I thought was best and put my full effort into it in order to both embrace this ambiguity and be confident in my decisions. I think that the combination of this creative confidence and embracing ambiguity were two that I found to be helpful for me throughout the semester in my growth as a MIDE student.

            One habit that I think I need to work on would be the child’s eye and hyper observation. I tend to go into things, specifically assignments, having a thought or idea already in my head that might influence what I end up thinking about the assignment and where I would go with it. Not having any biases or preconceived notions about a certain topic should help me to embrace this ambiguity even more, and I think I struggled with doing this. I think being in quarantine during a global pandemic can definitely help me grow in this habit. With my whole life essentially being uprooted, I have had to find new ways of living and adapt to this new life. With seeing things from a new or fresher perspective, I could end up being more optimistic about the pandemic and see things from a new light. It can be hard in this situation to not fall into a rut, and I think If I practice this child’s eye mentality, this can certainly help me.

In terms of building more of an innovative character, I think this class in general and having to move to the design process has greatly helped me. Being able to approach things from a new point of view and having to completely change my mindset allowed me to think more creatively and with more importance. I have found that I care more about my day to day life with what I developed from the design process, and that is something that came from the beginning of classes when building up my innovative character started.

To start off with this reflection on innovative habits, I thought back to when we were introduced to these ideas earlier in the semester. I remember when I first read the assigned readings on some of these ideas such as embracing ambiguity and failing forward, I felt some internal pushback/judgment on the ideas. I felt this sudden response coming from inside me that felt threatened by the ideas or wanted to reject them as being “duh, that’s obvious” or trying to find some flaw in the idea that made it not resonate with me or my life. BUT– I made sure to hear out these inner thoughts that immediately sprang up and to challenge them. The result? Lots of growth. Rather than just hearing these concepts as a bunch of phrases I have heard, I know have a much better grasp on the meaning and depth that these ideas include, and how they really can be incorporated into my own life and shape me into a more innovative person.

In my life this semester, I have been more mindful during my daily walks by incorporating child’s eye and hyper observation. Previously, I find that I am often in sort of a “blinders on” trance walking to class where I can miss things that I would otherwise pick up when I am in an observant state. One benefit I have felt from this exercise is the passing of time- I feel like rushed and that I have more power over my time and thoughts, if that makes any sense. By taking these short spans of time between class to break free of other thoughts and to notice my surroundings, I have been able to relax more, focus on how I am feeling, and get into that curious and observant state where I can try to look at my surroundings with a fresh eye- I have noticed many things not only on campus but in my home town and neighborhood by doing this! During this time in particular, embracing ambiguity has been more applicable than usual in my life. Rather than being afraid of the unknown, I have “embraced it” by taking control of the things I can control (the meals I make, the schedule and routine I follow, my room and some of the home environment, etc), and to go with the flow and listen and join conversations about what’s happening rather than wasting energy simply worrying. This has allowed me to continue with my life despite all the new bumps and kinks we are all experiencing.

I have learned much about myself with respect to these habits– I want to focus on, in particular, is creative confidence. While I sometimes find myself feeling shy or uncertain in my life and sometimes in the classroom, I have always believed in my creativeness inside myself. But, while I knew I was creative, I lacked the creative confidence to use that to create things of and on my own and to further explore what I can do and just…do. I have also learned that I make assumptions about myself a lot without realizing it! I always assumed that I knew myself, but for example when we did this last design project, some of these assumptions proved wrong, for example if I like to follow a routine vs not, and what atmospheres I work best in.

One of these habits that comes most naturally to me is embracing ambiguity. Another one is being hyper-observant, which I have found myself to be at times, or more observant than others I know at times because I do like to take breaks to clear my head and walk around just for the purpose of walking around and seeing. But, going back to embracing ambiguity, I think that this is a habit that can definitely be strengthened by doing, and I’ve been faced with many unknowns/events where I did not know how it was going to end when I was younger, so I think that I became accustomed to understanding to accept it as best as I can and to find a way to make good and embrace the unknown rather than be afraid of it.

One habit that I want to work on the most is failing forward because this strongly applies to my life as a college student who is experiencing many things for the first time ever and is beginning to enter and find a path in the professional world. Relating back to what I said at first (how I would find something to challenge or disagree with), I felt some internal pushback due to the very strong statements made by the author of the article. BUT, I realized that there were so many great points, and I completely agree that failing forward is essential to make progress and move forward in life. Our failure resumes were an essential activity as part of the module, and I actually found the failure resumes of my peers to be helpful because they classified things as failures that I completely slipped my mind or I didn’t think counted as a failure when I made mine (ex. can’t back the car out of the garage without hitting something). By knowing to not be afraid of failure, I can go ahead and put myself out there, knowing that failure is not necessarily a setback, but simply a step to fail ahead and make more progress and learn from those experiences. I know that as I continue to interview and take part in my internship this summer, I will experience some sort of failure (which I realize now can encompass a broad range of things, failures don’t just have to be the big things like failing an interview). In fact, I know feel that I do not want to not experience failure. If everything goes right, how will we learn as much? While success is indeed important and I am definitely not preoccupied with failure by any means, i just think this idea of using failure to move forward and understand that our reaction to failure is important to how we pick ourselves up afterwards is really important to our success and growth in life.

One interesting thing I have noticed is how we are all such different people, and creative people can have different strengths and habits that have come naturally to them or they have really worked on to strengthen and incorporate into their lives. I have gotten really inspired to be more confident in showcasing my work and trying to make things using my creativity from an older MIDE major friend who has already graduated. I think that by having people to look up to or get inspired by will absolutely help me grow, and by continuing to practice these habits (and new ways to do so) is essential as well. I think that building an innovative character takes time and effort, and a lot can be drawn from inspiration and others. I was watching a youtube the other day with my friend (she had a video on how she became an entrepreneur and created her own brand after working a corporate job for a while), and it got the both of us really inspired to get creative and actually create things (taking pictures, making mood boards, learning how to code and design a website, etc). I will continue to try new things, and to not assume things about myself as best as I can (such as “I won’t enjoy that, or that won’t work for me, or I won’t be good at that so I should try this instead”). I also plan to work together with my other creative friends to continue to get inspired and build an innovative character through projects together and hopefully some trips and activities together this summer. I also found that listening to certain podcasts has been a great activity. I listened to one from the founder of Birchbox on how she created the company, and I thought this was very interesting, and you could see how innovative her ideas and the business model really was at the time (samples used to be free, throwaway things, now people PAY to get birchbox samples to try products out in smaller sizes, changing the way that consumers and beauty companies think about samples).

I think that for me one of the most important habits we’ve talked about this semester for me was child eye and hyper observation. In a lot of respects, I never quite realized how much of my time I spent in my own head never really taking the time or chance to look around. I always thought that I was good at being observant and noticing things, but it wasn’t until I really stopped and actually tried to be observant that I realized how much I was missing. When I started to try to be more aware and observant in my life, I started to realize just how much I was missing that could be beneficial, not just as a MIDE major, but as a WMST minor and as a person in general. The skills and habits that I started working on in terms of child’s eye and hyper observation became super important in terms of the other humanities focused classes I was taking this semester and really helped me to understand those classes in ways I otherwise would have missed.

I think one thing that I learned about myself that I deem as the most important is connected to the idea of failing forward. I’ve never really noticed before the role of failure plays in my life and the ways in which I deal and interact with it. I’ve never been particularly effected by failure, my parents always joked that I was like Rafiki from The Lion King “What does it matter? It was in the past!” I always just brushed it off and moved on, and while that, in my opinion, is a good thing I don’t think it’s always all that helpful. I never really took the time to reflect on what failing meant or how to actually use the failure to my benefit – it was over, nothing I could do about it now, and I moved on. No matter what that failure was, a test, a paper, an audition, etc. Sometimes I would stop and think and try to do things differently the next time, but only for things that I felt were important, not for ALL things. I do still think that there are some failures that just need to be moved past, but I also think that I need to start actually thinking about and utilizing my failures to my benefit a lot more than I have in the past.

I think the habit that comes more naturally to me is the idea of embracing ambiguity. Which is kind of weird, especially when I think about my relationship to some of the other skills we’ve learned and talked about – in a way it’s almost contradictory. But I’ve never been bothered by not knowing what’s gonna happen, be it waiting for an audition announcement, college acceptance letter, internship offers, etc. I’ve always lived my life by a saying my parents used to use “Why curse the darkness when you can light a candle?” I feel like ambiguity never bothers me because I figure that no matter what, I can make the best of any situation I’m in. Waiting for college acceptance never bothered me because no matter where I went, whether it was my top choice or my last choice, I could and would be happy there. If I don’t make an audition or tryouts for something I wanted to do, I think about what else I can be doing instead. Ambiguity to me isn’t about not knowing what’s gonna happen, but rather knowing that something is going to happen and that no matter what it is, it can be great – sometimes it just takes a bit more effort than others.

I think that the habit I struggle with the most is creative confidence. I’ve never necessarily thought of myself as a particularly “creative” person before. I’ve always been most comfortable working in terms of abstractions and complex thoughts, but never really in the realm of “new” or “creative” ideas – especially not when it comes to the creation of physical objects, creations, or ideas. Over the course of the semester I think that one thing I’ve struggled with is trying to break out of simply working in abstract thoughts and actually trying to get into the physical world a bit more – and it has not been easy. The brainstorming activity and the concept creation done in the second half of the semester were particularly difficult for me since the idea of a “Velcro pants” idea doesn’t come naturally to me, I really have to work and push myself in ways that I’m not used to doing to get to some of those ideas. As I continue on in the MIDE major, I really want to try to get to a point where it does come more naturally to me, and that’s gonna take a great deal of work.

One way I was think that I could maybe practice some of this creative confidence would be to try to do it more often. Just trying to push myself out of my comfort zones and do things that really force me to stick with my ideas and my thoughts without second guessing whether what I’m doing is “good” or “creative” enough. I’ve been thinking about trying to write for years now, but every time I try, I never actually do because, for whatever reason, I’ve managed to convince myself that I can’t write so why bother doing something I’m not good at? This is a habit that I really want to break and work on changing. Rather than asking “why” I want to switch to a question of “why NOT”. Just focus more on being comfortable in allowing myself to be more creative and to be bad at things without consistently feeling like I’m wasting my time. Beyond writing, I want to try doing other small things, maybe drawing or painting, maybe just exploring with what I like or don’t like, but doing more of the sorts of things that I’ve stopped doing over the years because I was “bad” at it.

I think that, at least for me, a really important part of building an innovative character is acceptance and open-mindedness. These two qualities are ones that I think are important to a lot of the different characteristics pointed out above but are never necessarily explicitly said. It’s not easy to accept that you’re bad at something or that you need help with something, but I don’t believe that you can build an innovative character on your own – it takes teamwork and it takes support. And that can be really hard for some people, myself included. I much prefer to do things on my own and rarely have to interact with others, which isn’t really possible, and in a lot of ways isn’t all that helpful. Building an innovative character is about being open to possibility and being willing to embrace change and help from those around you, and I definitely think that it isn’t something that happens overnight. Before this class, I never really thought about a lot of these ideas and concepts in terms of myself and my everyday life, and getting to a point where they become second nature isn’t going to be easy, but it’s something I look forward to learning about and incorporating into myself.

As I reflect on MIDE 300 and this semester the first word that pops into my head is growth. Although this is not a word that we really focused on, I think it symbolizes the general theme that I would use to describe my experience. I have always been able to see a design or a painting and recreate it pretty well with free hand, and my artistic abilities are pretty good. I used to think that artistic ability/skill was the same as creativity, but throughout this class I have learned that they are not. 

I have learned that creativity is something you can be born with, but also something that takes a lot of time and work to develop if you are not as naturally inclined. Before this class I would tell myself that I wasn’t creative, and I would just copy other inspiring artists, or ideas, but after this class I have really begun to follow my own path. Failing forward has always been something that has come pretty naturally for me. I think that my failing forward stems from my desire to be successful and self drive. Especially being an athlete, it was very important to always fail forward and continue improving so I think that has stuck with me ever since and I am not afraid of a challenge (ambiguity). 

On the other hand, my creative confidence as I stated before is a weakness, as well as my child’s eye. Throughout this course, I realized that all of these habits are able to be improved through practice and learning. I learned that I am able to be creative and see things differently than the “mainstream” idea and continue to create. This will allow me to have a lot of different paths in life. I think that I worked on my child’s eye and creative confidence the most throughout this class, and I definitely see a difference. I do not worry or get nervous before posting my work, and I do not rely on other classmates’ ideas for inspiration. The inspiration posts that we did in the middle of the course were really beneficial because they helped me pinpoint my inspiration and what was most effective.

I will continue to use all of these skills throughout the rest of my time at Bucknell and in my life. I already incorporated some of these ideas into my LinkedIn bio “I am majoring in Markets, Innovation, and Design. This will help me further my ability to use both left and right brain skills to understand strategy, develop creativity, and feel comfortable with ambiguity”. I want to pursue a career in sales and trading or wealth management, and although this might not sound like a normal MIDE job, I know that MIDE will help make me an asset to any team through my different perspectives and skills.

I think our class has gotten a really unique education and understanding of some of the concepts that we studied. The habits that we initially learned in an academic setting, quickly became habits that would be really helpful for our transition into social distancing. One habit that has been specifically helpful to me this semester is ‘embracing ambiguity’. Since the day that Bucknell moved the rest of the semester to remote online classes, everyday has been unfamiliar and the future, unknown. Of course there are parts of this pandemic that are frightening, besides the fear of being infected, people are losing their jobs, people are struggling with mental health issues, and no one knows when we might return to our old lives. It isn’t irrational to panic at times, but ultimately, because there is nothing that we can do, in order to stay sane, we must somewhat embrace the ambiguity. With all of this change, a lot is lost, but there are also new opportunities. Embracing ambiguity during these times has allowed me to let go of some of my anxieties surrounding the pandemic and think more optimistically. I have mostly accepted the current state of things, and am now setting new goals to keep me optimistic. For example, I had planned to study abroad for the Fall semester with a program that traveled to Costa Rica, Australia and South Africa. I was so excited for this trip and really attached to the idea that it would happen. However, a few days ago I got notified that the trip was altered so that the first third of the classes would be taught remotely online and the second two-thirds of the trip would be taught also online but onsight in one location. I was pretty upset to get this news, because I hadn’t truly allowed myself to embrace the possibility of something like this happening. However, I was optimistic about trying to make this new program style work. I took a look at my options and saw that I could choose an entirely new location. Now, I am planning on going to Berlin (another location on my bucket list), I am able to take more classes that count towards my major, and during the first third of the semester, I will hopefully be able to spend some time on Bucknell’s campus (something that was a difficult sacrifice to make). Now, I remind myself to not be too attached to this plan, as things might change again, and a change of plans isn’t always a bad thing. I think the habit of embracing ambiguity comes a little easier to me because in my daily life I try to practice gratitude. Practicing gratitude makes it easier to realize that I am lucky to have the problem of questioning if I will get to travel the world next semester or not. When it got canceled, I was definitely disappointed, but I also felt absurd feeling too sorry for myself. As long as my family and friends are healthy and safe, I am thankful for the problems that I have, because I know they could be so terribly worse. Focusing on what I do have makes it easier to accept the unknown factors of the future.

A habit that doesn’t come as naturally to me is failing forward. When I attempt something new, I typically want to excel at it right off the bat. I understand that learning something new takes time, but I hate the idea of failing at something. I think to combat this fear and to become more comfortable with failing, I want to create challenges for myself during the quarantine. I will have a lot of time when classes end, so I think this is a perfect time to work on this habit. I want to force myself to try new things whether it be art, music, exercise, etc. For example, maybe I can challenge myself to paint a self portrait. I’m sure that would come out horribly considering I don’t remember the last time that I painted free-hand, but maybe if I become comfortable with seeing a failed outcome of something that I truly tried to accomplish will make me more comfortable with being unsuccessful. I want to adopt an attitude that is unafraid to fail and let my failures motivate me to try again. 

The extra amount of time that is available to me right now in some ways is really exciting. When I am home I am usually looking to spend as much time as possible either working or with my friends. It doesn’t leave a lot of time for boredom and the creativity that spurs from having nothing to do. I have been pretty preoccupied with homework since being home, but I am excited for the semester to officially end so that I can get started with some projects that I have in mind. One ambitious project that I am thinking about is painting a mural on my bedroom wall. Hopefully with the help of some family members and maybe an artistic, masked friend I might be able to tackle the project. I never would have thought I had the time to do that before, but now I do. I think finding extended time alone is definitely a habit that I might want to adopt more in the future to seek inspiration.

This semester, “failing forward” and having a “child’s eye” were habits that I found playing big roles in my semester. In this course, I mostly saw myself failing forward when I received constructive criticism on assignments. In my efforts of failing forward, I learned that I am not great at handling being criticized. For example, when I received feedback on mindmaps I would only listen to some of the advice I was given because I thought certain points were not right and that I was being misunderstood. However, as I started to listen to criticism/advice more, even advice that made me uncomfortable, I saw my mindmaps starting to improve. After learning about looking at the world with a child’s eye, I found myself actively using this practice. I learned that this is a habit that is easy for me to use, and I used it in a number of areas for this course. For example, when writing inspiration posts, I found that having a child’s eye was useful in observing my surroundings in order to come up with ideas of ways to find inspiration. Also, when visiting my client’s storefront for the group project, it was definitely useful to use a child’s eye when taking in the environment in order to benefit their website.

“Creative confidence” is a habit that I feel has always come pretty naturally to me. I enjoy being creative and using expressive methods for creativity, so I am usually comfortable being challenged to be creative. I consider myself to be a very visual learner and find myself expressing my own ideas in visual ways. However, although I feel that this habit comes easiest to me, there are still areas of it that I struggle with. For example, I am a lot more confident with artistic related creativity than non-visual creativity.

“Embracing ambiguity” is something that I have always found to be very challenging. But due to the circumstances of this semester, it was a habit that was especially important for me to practice. This semester has definitely been one of the most ambiguous periods of time I have ever experienced. The ambiguity of suddenly moving to a remote education model and being home was something that was very overwhelming and scary to me. However, over the past month, the continuous ambiguity has become less scary and more of something that I must learn to embrace. I have realized that although the situation we are in is not ideal, embracing the ambiguity of it is vital in order to find the good in the situation and benefit ourselves. Although I have started to work on my relationship with ambiguity, it is still not close to where I would like to be with embracing it. I truly believe that this habit will be valuable even outside of situations like this pandemic.

The habits that I have started to explore and develop in this course have greatly contributed to transforming myself into a more innovative character. Although practicing these habits is not always easy outside of the course, I would like to try harder to put them to use in all areas of my life as I believe this will help me build a good relationship with them and use them in unique ways.

Since I heard about Bucknell, the MIDE major has always stood out to me because it seemed flexible, in the best way. I often feel like some majors can be so constructed and consist of lectures, essays, and multiple choice tests. In high school, I always felt like the pressure of tests got the best of me and my desire to actually learn. I would create flash cards upon flash cards to memorize everything and the minute I walked out of the class, boom nothing… I couldn’t remember a thing. I have always found my passions in art, movies, advertisements, people honestly. So, obviously I was very excited to get into this Imagination workshop.

Right off the bat we created an apple picker, a robotic one. Somehow my mind jumped to sculpting a giraffe that eats the apples and then the apples go into his belly where the human can retrieve them. I mean, who knew I could really be a kid again, look through the world with a child’s eye lens. Notice opportunity, build something out of nothing, constantly ask questions and learn. The greatest lesson I walked away from in this class is the ability to look for the little girl in me. Not to focus so much on what everyone else is doing, to simply create from what I knew, what I wanted. That is how design works best, doing the unthinkable. I bet no one else has thought of a robotic giraffe, nor will they ever have to… but no one ever planned for COVID-19, or thought they had to, therefore the ability to constantly be able to problem solve for the most unpredictable scenarios.

I have always had a habit of waiting for the last moment to do something. This was the first class that I caught myself naturally working on the work gradually. Through our mind maps, I recognized that you simply need time to understand and connect the dots clearly to understand how to express the articles. Even with meeting our company that we planned to do a website for, we met them took notes, got to know their stories and tried to exactly meet their needs. After the professors immediately called us out for rushing the process, we all sat together for a couple hours thinking through every element of what was being presented before us. We changed the entire presentation to how it should have originally been. In the real world, the greatest success takes time, thought, and collaboration. I

The next chapter of our lives after graduation will not look anything like Bucknell and that is okay, and scary. We live in a world with constant great unknowns, the ambiguity of what’s to come next is on all our minds. Sitting at home creating my humor board was something even my parents could not believe I did, but both of the professors, or you professors, encouraged me to think of something positive I can bring out of this. Professor Smith said it best, practicing playfulness. I thank you guys for your time and efforts. The ability to use imagination, creativity, I felt like we all simply encouraged and supported what we thought was best, as if there was never one correct answers. The room constantly was full of different ideas, and the encouragement from the Professors to push us to share and discuss brought a sense of comfort that diminished any sort of “stressful” college atmosphere.

Throughout my time in MIDE 300 this semester, I think creative confidence and embracing ambiguity are the 2 concepts that have resonated most with me, and I will take these concepts with me after this class.

Creative confidence was something that I had to embrace throughout the semester, especially when we worked through the Design Process. By taking each step through the process, I actually gave my creative ideas a structure and a foundation, where before I would’ve never done that. I would either just take the idea and run with it, or abandon it all together, but through creative confidence, I have given my most wild ideas a chance and actually examined if there was real potential within them. It has given me a whole new definition of what I thought creativity was and how it is achieved, and I am thankful for that new insight because it can open new doors for me in the future and keep me optimistic.

Another habit that I had to learn to embrace throughout this course was ambiguity. At first I didn’t really understand it when it came to incorporating it into our assignments, but then I realized, there really was no single correct answer and I loved this. When it came to the candlelight assignment, I felt like I completely embraced the ambiguity of the instructions and it was so cool to see how everyone else had embraced it too. The ambiguity relieved me of some anxiety because I knew it was going to be different for everyone. I really want to take this habit with me and apply it to different things in my life more. This habit also helped with continuing this course and other courses remotely. I had to embrace the uncertainties about the future of what class was going to look like, and I think I saved myself a lot of anxiety by doing that too.

One of the habits that came more naturally to me was failing forward. Throughout my whole life, I’ve never been to hard on myself if I fell short somewhere, because I just looked at it as a learning experience, and an insight that I take with me into future situations. I believe that you have to fail a few times to succeed in the end, and our failures and how we respond to them is indicative of our character.

I think I need to work on the child’s-eye habit more. Looking at something with fresh eyes and a fresh perspective is something I need to work on because often times I get into a routine and on auto-pilot and don’t recognize details as much as I should. These details could potentially provide new insights to me that can be helpful when problem solving or in other challenges in life. When we walked around campus with our “child’s eye”, I noticed a lot of beauty in our campus, and I really enjoyed this exercise because it was the first time I had really picked my head up to notice the details around me. I could maybe improve on this by sitting outside or taking walks without a phone with the intension of noticing the small things and then translate this into my summer job (sailing instructor) potentially by just taking a few extra minutes to notice details that can be improved upon.

Overall I think my innovative character has developed significantly throughout the semester. I think about markets, innovation, and design with a lot more respect to the process and hard work behind it and I am excited to develop this character more in future MIDE classes that I take!

This semester, I had not expected MIDE 300 to be as different and insightful as it was. I was expecting a traditional class where you memorize business concepts and are told to apply them to fake scenarios, but was pleasantly surprised with a class unlike one I have ever taken before. The way we learned different ways to think through cool, hands-on projects was something I found really enjoyable. I am disappointed we did not get to experience the entirety of the class as it was meant to be, including the website design portion, but I still feel as though the core habits we were taught will stick with me in the future.

I feel like one of the most notable things I learned in this class is that I am not good at embracing ambiguity. This became readily apparent when we would have assignments, such as the room creation assignment, where the guidelines and rules of the assignment where open to interpretation and vague. I realized that I struggled to decide how to approach the assignment because of the lack of rules. One of the things that I found helped this was the constraint maps we made. These helped narrow down the parameters of the projects and made it easier to start them, hurrying up the process.

One thing I noticed that I excelled at was creative confidence. I don’t often plan out what I am going to do, just jump in and wing it. This allows me to commit to an idea quickly and see the idea through until completion, because I didn’t spend a lot of time questioning my plan. I found this to be both a good and bad thing. It meant that I had more faith in my end products because I didn’t question them and compare them to alternatives, but it also meant that I may have missed a better idea by not considering many different ideas.

After going through this course, the one thing I want to work on most is the child’s eye perspective. I noticed I am not as observant as I want to be and I think practicing a child’s eye perspective could help with that. Overall, I think the habits I learned in this course and going to help me in my future to complete assignments as both an artist and student. Hopefully I can learn some more good habits and drop the bad habits I have as this quarantine continues.

            I remember walking into MIDE-300 on the first day and getting so excited to not see a typical classroom setup, I loved the workshop feel as soon as I entered. I was worried because although I consider myself creative, my artistic abilities are a bit lacking and I didn’t want to embarrass myself. And that thought alone I would soon realize was my problem. MIDE-300 helped me target where I was falling short as a designer, innovator, and overall student. I always seem to be so concerned with what those around me would think. This class helped me target this problem and begin the steps toward fixing it. I love to talk about friends but when it comes to people I don’t know, I have an extreme fear of judgement. I decided I would force myself to volunteer in a class at least once a day, if the opportunity presents itself. 

            This habit helped me grow as a person and overall be more comfortable with myself and my ideas. This habit was unfortunately put on hold when the semester ended early yet I was able to continue the same confidence in my work and I feel as though I have completely ridden myself of the fear of what my classmates might think. Going forward I want to work on this habit even more and volunteer for public speaking opportunities as they come my way, in hopes I might be able eventually become completely self-assured in this area. 

            Another habit I began with this class was making sure to do something for myself each day. The eagerness to workout and be active has always come naturally to me, but I rarely do these things on purpose to benefit my mental health. I began taking walks or runs outside each day at school, and making sure to really take in everything around me. At home, during quarantine, this has become one of my favorite daily activities and something that I will definitely continue even after this is over. I have finally built the habit of taking time out of the day for self-reflection in whatever activity I choose; recently my favorite has been bike rides. 

            I really appreciate the things I have learned in this class, especially the pride I feel knowing I am successfully able to form habits. Going forward I plan to make new habits that will benefit me, such as, no longer checking my phone right when I wake up in the morning.

MIDE 300 has caused me to be aware of two main habits that comprise an innovative character: embracing ambiguity and creative confidence. My awareness for these habits don’t just apply to my experience in MIDE, but also in my other classes and in my spare time as well. I’m extremely grateful that my MIDE experience has allowed me to engage in these two habits more, because I feel that they have allowed me to extract the most out of each event or situation. 

I’ve always been the type of person to set long term goals… daily goals on the other hand, not so much. I’m a huge procrastinator, and that’s a habit I think I’ll never fully grow out of. Because of this habit of mine, I have trouble meeting daily goals. That’s why I’ve recently begun to set goals with more “buffer” time. Instead of breaking up an essay and planning to write two paragraphs each day for three days, I’ll just plan to finish it in a week. I designed my prototype based on this long-term goal mindset, and it has worked really well thus far. But with these long-term goals obviously comes a certain level of ambiguity, and I’ve learned to embrace this ambiguity because that’s how I’m the most productive. This ambiguity is definitely on a way smaller scale than the ambiguity that’s present now because of this global pandemic. But because of the short term ambiguity that I’ve been experiencing lately as a result of my goals, it has helped me to approach our ambiguous future in a much more positive light. The government can plan to reopen the economy soon, but in reality, who knows what will happen tomorrow, next week, next month, or in September? The question of whether or not we will go back to school in the Fall is something I used to wonder almost every day, but I realized that planning my current life around a future that is unpredictable isn’t the most beneficial way of living. I don’t know if I’ll be able to be completely comfortable with full ambiguity, as I do need some sort of structure in my life. However, the ambiguity that I’ve experienced thus far with my MIDE prototype has helped me to coexist with it better. 

Creative confidence is the other habit that impacted my life a lot this past semester. I’ve always loved art and considered myself a creative person, but MIDE has shown me firsthand that creativity doesn’t just end with art. MIDE has taught me to tap into my right brain, to trust it more, and to apply it to things outside the realm of MIDE. As the semester progressed, I found myself naturally engaging in creative confidence more and more. I found myself using it most in my Integrated Perspectives class, Guessing the Future. Many of the topics we learn about include philosophers and astronomers, all of whom try and predict the future in a scientific and theological way. I’ve never been exposed to astronomy, nor have I ever been good at understanding divine philosophy. However, when answering our weekly journal prompts that require us to synthesize and use much of our own opinion, I find myself using creative confidence to make new connections and revelations that I normally would be too nervous to. It’s really easy for me to second guess myself, especially on topics that can be easily argued from both sides. However, being able to find that confidence in my creative thinking has made critical thinking much easier for me. 

Failing forward is definitely a habit that I still need to work on in the future. I think many of us have been taught that we have to be right, that mistakes aren’t positive. However, being in MIDE has taught me that you shouldn’t fall in love with your first idea and that mistakes can lead to great outcomes. Although I understand the concept of failing forward, actually doing so in real life is a different story. There has been so much emphasis on our grades all our lives, and it seems that so much is on the line for us as students nowadays. People fear failure, me included, so it definitely will be hard to accept the positives that come along with the negatives of it. I hope that in the future I’ll be able to put myself in more ambiguous situations, ones that might involve higher risk. The higher the risk, the higher the reward–that’s what failing forward means to me

Throughout this semester, I feel like I have grown more in my Creative Confidence. Whenever we would be tasked with creating something, I would be at a loss on where to begin. I usually waited for a few days and asked around what other people were doing to gauge what their projects would be so I would be able to create something on a similar scale. However, as the class progressed, I later realized that the projects were interpreted differently by each person, which resulted in creations reflective of their own personalities. Some people had more strengths in presenting something they were passionate about and others were more inclined on creating a work of art that is open for interpretation. For example, the Mind Maps we created gave me more stress than enjoyment, as I struggled to process my thoughts through spatial and artistic means, as well as describing each connection. Creative projects such as the Home Materials Creation, the Tea Light, and even the Failure Resume allowed me to express my personality through a way that was unique to me. Seeing everyone’s creations and how their constructs reflected their personalities were very eye-opening, and it was refreshing to experience a project where no one was wrong and everyone was encouraged to share their thought processes. These experiences have helped me boost my confidence in doing things that pique my interest, such as learning a new instrument, or creating projects for other classes that are, “more me.”

Personally, looking at the world through a “Child’s Eye” has always come naturally for me. Moving to the US from different countries and cultures, I was always fascinated at the differences I noticed between my two lives. I learned from a young age to take everything with a grain of salt and to look at everything in a holistic sense. “How does this work?” “What part does this piece serve in a larger scheme?” are questions I would often ask myself. 

Going through this semester and a few weeks in semi-isolation, I realized that ambiguity is something I’m not completely comfortable in. I used to always describe my unorganized lifestyle as fun and exciting, but in these times, I have realized that true ambiguity is neither fun nor exciting. Not knowing what the future holds isn’t something I have to be comfortable with, but something that I need to learn to live with. I’ve been training myself to process and reprocess my thoughts and feelings so as to prevent any unreasonable anxiety and to help me come to terms with life as-is. 

To be an innovative character, I believe someone should fully utilize their strong habits in respect to the ones we learned in MIDe 300, but to also acknowledge and be comfortable with the habits they are least practicing. Knowing your field of expertise and comfort, as well as acknowledging things you aren’t and being able to ask for help in that specific area would help shape and execute an innovative person’s career and projects.

I believe MIDE 300 has completely changed my perspective with a number of habits we looked at. More specifically, I believe as a result of this semester I am embracing child’s eye and creative confidence more. Within most of my classes I used to simply focus on the work that had to get done rather than the possibilities and opportunities to explore different perspectives and topics within it. Now, however, through opening my eyes to looking at assignments and problems to tackle with a child’s eye, I believe it is really helping me. Applying what we learned about being hyper focused not only on my surroundings (which has been a perspective shifter for me as well, especially in quarantine) but also take a look at things / assignments with fresh eyes as an opportunity to learn as much as I can. I also believe this semester in MIDE 300 has made me realize I need to work on my creative confidence — and helped me do this. I consider myself a creative person for sure, but I have always compared myself to others in that and not necessarily had the confidence to embrace it in comparison to other creative people. I also struggle with class participation – which I have always thought is kind of odd because socially I’m a very outgoing friendly person. But in class, I typically lack the confidence to take the initiative and share my perspective and what I have to say. This class has really pushed me to have the confidence to speak up in class. Everyone has a different perspective and I need to be confident in my creative and my perspective. At the beginning of the MIDE 300 class I barely participated voluntarily – but right before spring break I was constantly raising my hand, wanting to share my though process of developing the creative objects we did and learn how that differed from others. I truly believe that MIDE 300 helped me tackle this habit, and I will definitely take these new habits of being confident onto my other classes.

Naturally, I believe I am someone that already embraces ambiguity and this comes naturally to me. I have always been a risk-taker, and I like the feeling of not knowing what’s going to come next or what the direct path should be for the desired outcome. In fact, I prefer not knowing what the outcome is going to be and enjoy the possibility that it could be unexpected. Learning about this in the semester made me realize how this habit comes naturally to me, and further enforces that I should continue to embrace ambiguity and uncertainty because the best results can come when there aren’t necessarily pre-set expectations.

As a whole I believe I really learned a great deal in MIDE 300 and not only am I excited to take what I have learned and the habits I’ve worked through to have a more innovative character to the next MIDE classes, but also I’m excited to apply it to the other aspects of my life — especially with all of the free time in quarantine. I definitely need to continue to work on all of these habits but this semester I believe I’ve grown a lot through everything we learned and focused on.

Embracing ambiguity has developed been a habit I have tried to develop and has played a big role in my life. I am the type of person who always likes to know what is happening, when it is happening, and every detail I can possibly find. Before this class, I was not very comfortable with the unknown. The way this class is structured has really helped me be okay with not being certain, especially when it comes to grading. I am the type of person who is always checking my grades, and checking every box on a list of what I can do to get a good grade. This class does not allow for that, and at first that made me really uncomfortable and anxious. As time went on I began to accept the fact that I was not going to know my grade in this class until the end, and that I just needed to try my best and apply myself and trust that it would all work out. Practicing this habit for MIDE actually made me feel a lot less anxious than I normally do about grades in other classes, even when these classes did regularly post grades. Getting myself into the mindset of trying my best and trusting that that would do me well was a really important outcome of embracing ambiguity for me.

In respect to failing forward, I have learned that I am really afraid of failure and that I haven’t really faced a lot of it. When we were creating our failure resumes, I realized that often I don’t face failure. I learned that this is definitely one of my faults, because I have recently been encountering failure a lot more and I honestly don’t know how to deal with it. I have always been the type of person who succeeds in school and gets good grades, and this has especially been the case since college. Remote learning, though, has been extremely challenging for me and I have not been able to apply myself nearly as well. I have received some not so great grades in a few of my classes. By not so great, I mean so Bs. I was so upset when I received these grades, and now that I am reflecting on it I realize it is because I am truly afraid of failure especially when it comes to school. This is something I really want to work on. Not to say that I am going to try and fail, but when I do I want to learn from it rather than just be really upset. Remote learning has been difficult, but has taught me a lot about how I deal with failure and is definitely a unique learning experience I might not have gotten if not for COVID19.

I feel as though creative confidence comes naturally to me. I am someone who really loves art and design, but is not the best at it. I am pursuing an art minor with total knowledge than I am really not that great of an artist, but I love being creative and expressing myself through art and it doesn’t matter to me that I am not the best at it. Creativity is one of the few things I am really confident about in life, but I have realized it is because it is something I really enjoy and am passionate about. I feel like a lot of people decide they are not creative and just avoid any opportunity to be creative, but I have learned that really anyone can be creative whether that is in art or just ideas. You don’t have to be the best at something to be passionate about it and want to practice is as much as possible.

I would say, connecting to what I have learned about myself, I would like to work on failing forward and being able to accept failure and use it as a learning experience. To be totally honest, I have really been feeling like a failure lately. After handing in lot of mediocre work due to a lack of focus in quarantine, as well as losing my internship I feel like I have been facing a lot of challenges. Naturally, all I want to do about it is sulk and feel sorry for myself. What I am going to try to do is accept that, yes, this summer is going to be full of failures and disappointments but there are ways to spin these things in a positive light. I have already made steps to practice failing forward, such as looking for alternate solutions to my problems. I think some other steps I can take to embrace this habit is to really reflect on my failures. Often, when we fail we like to forget about it and never bring it up again. I never like to look back on things that I might have done a really bad job on, but I feel like this could be a really helpful step for me in using my failures to better myself. Other thing I think I really need to do is own up to my own failures. A lot of the time I don’t want to accept the fact that I have failed, so I put the blame on the professor or the circumstances I was in. What I really need to do is accept that I might have made a mistake, and recognize those mistakes in order to do better next time.

Overall, looking back, I feel like this class has subtly made a huge change in my life. I feel more confident in myself as a creative thinker as well as someone who is okay with accepting ambiguity. During this time, I think these are two of the most important skills I could have learned in a class and I am very thankful for that.

Learning about the five main habits of innovation and design was very interesting for me this semester and fun to try to use. I think the one that I gravitated the most towards was failing forward and learning to be ok with being wrong. I think this was one that I half struggled with, and half was using it before this semester. I would struggle with it in some areas of my life, such as if I got a question wrong or if my design wouldn’t come out how I wanted it to be, I would just give up sometimes. Other times, such as when pursuing goals of mine, if there was an obstacle in the way or I failed one time at it, I would have the persistence to keep going. I think this habit especially showed for me during this last project where when I lost track of doing my challenge, instead of just giving up on it completely, I reworked it and found something that works better for me that still achieves the goal that I wanted.  

The other habit that was fun for me was Child’s eye. I think I’ve always been pretty detail-oriented, and a lot of times, when I’m walking around, I will notice things because I like to look around and take in my surroundings. It has become more constant, and now when I’m at home, I’m always looking around and using a lot of my senses to take in the world around me. 

The habit that I still want to work on embracing ambiguity. Right now, I am still really bad with it, especially when thinking about big ambiguous questions such as “what do I want to do with my life.” I am a person who needs a little bit of structure and likes to be goal-oriented so that I have something to focus on. In this case, though, where I have no clue what I want to do with my life after college, I am stressing. I think that I can practice growing with this habit by giving myself some constraints like using a constraint map. I also could just jump off the high dive into the deep end and go down one path, knowing that there is always the testing and iteration and that I can then later change my mind and go down a different way. Overall really liked this course and have had fun learning about these five habits and hope to continue to use them and the processes I’ve learned in my everyday life and career going forward.

Throughout the semester I have been able to develop and improve my creative confidence. This has allowed me to be most comfortable using this skill outside of the classroom. Along with this, I think that I have been able to push myself to accept failure and use it as a learning opportunity. Prior to this class I would not share my ideas in a large group unless I had previously received approval of them from others or was very confident in the idea. I did not realize the importance of developing ideas and putting “crazy” ideas on the table. If my idea was not complete or seemed outlandish I thought that it was not worth mentioning but, I have learned that these ideas are almost the most important because they spark inspiration for other ideas. I thought that if my ideas were not developed further or put on a sideburner it was a failure, but i have since realized again that this was a result of being overly critical of myself and ideas and this is not a failure in anyway but, the ideas present an opportunity to be developed or worked into other ideas. These new understandings have helped me to become more willing to try things in regards to many topics. Since being home I have picked up some new hobbies such as embroidery, baking, and drawing. I had previously done all of these but always limited myself on complexity. I have noticed that lately I have been more willing to take risks in regards to being creative and if something does not turn out as planned I am less likely to throw it away like I had previously always done and more likely to try and turn it into something else. I also think that the development in my ability to accept failure has helped me to do things that are more outside of my comfort zone. 

By doing this, I have realized that I am a bit of a perfectionist and struggle to move past small imperfections in my work. Although this class has helped me to work on this I think that in order to fully be able to move past these small details I will need to work on this skill further. I have come to realize that the small imperfections in creative activities such as drawing make the work more personalized and may actually make it better instead of worse. In order to develop this skill more I want to continue to participate in activities that are outside of my comfort zone and push myself to go through with things even when I do not know the end result. Although I feel as though I have been able to develop my creative confidence and my ability to accept failure the most, I think that those are also the two habits that I still want to work on the most. 

A habit that comes naturally to me is a child’s eye. My entire life I have been a very observant person and have noticed small details that surround me. This may be due to my slight tendency to be a perfectionist that I am able to recognize such minute details. I have found that although this is a good skill when I want to consciously recognize my surroundings it is an annoyance when I am just relaxing. I find that in these times when I am not trying to recognize my surroundings is when I am able to do it best. Therefore, I hope to be able to hone in this skill and be able to use it more intentionally when developing ideas and working through problems. 

Throughout MIDE 300 I have been pushed out of my comfort zone and put into ambiguous situations. Because of this, I am able to come out of the class more comfortable in these situations while also building a more innovative character. This class has taught me how to think differently and consider all alternatives before moving forward with ideas. In the future I hope to use these habits I learned as well as skills such as mind mapping to further develop myself as a student and an innovator. 

I have always considered myself to be a creative person simply because I love art and people have told me that I am creative. I don’t think I had ever really questioned this until MIDe 300. It’s not that I don’t consider myself creative anymore, but I now understand that there’s more to creativity than just being a talented artist or a good problem solver. I think that one of the habits that has stuck out to me most this semester is embracing ambiguity. Not only with the semester being canceled over half-way through and having to adopt a new way of learning, but also with the way that many of our assignments have been proposed. Oftentimes, our assignments were open-ended and left to us to figure out. At first, this frustrated me as I was so used to having assignments with detailed instructions. However, I now enjoy this method because it is so interesting to see how each student takes on the challenge, including my own. It was very cool to see my own projects play out because when I first read the instructions for an assignment, I had no clue where I was going to go with it and yet somehow I was always pretty pleased with the outcome. 

From this habit (embracing ambiguity) I have learned that it is okay to be confused and frustrated, but to take things one step at a time, ask questions, and get feedback. Regarding myself, I have learned that I am able to deal with ambiguity and come out the other side with a better understanding of the task.

I think that the habit that comes most naturally to me is creative confidence. This could be due to the fact that I had previously regarded myself as creative so I never really feared doing it wrong. However, I have since learned from this course that you can’t really go wrong when it comes to creativity because creativity is interpreted and implemented differently with different people. 

The habit that I want to work on is child’s eye. I can be stubborn and this can sometimes hinder my ability to see things from a new, fresh perspective. But, a child’s eye is important when it comes to being creative. I can work on growing with this habit by slowing down and actually thinking about or looking at what is in front of me. I can also try and look at things in its simplest form and use my imagination like a child to think about what it could be. 

Overall, I am very satisfied with what this class has taught me. I am leaving this class, and for maybe the first time, actually taking what I have learned and using it to further benefit my character and learning. 

Once we learned about the idea of having a child’s eye, I began observing my surroundings. Over this past semester, I’ve realized that school had been hindering my child’s eye as I had such tunnel vision, focusing on work and getting done what needs to be done. During quarantine, this is where my child’s eye perspective really came into play. I have always been told I’m childish or that I think like a child and I saw this as a bad thing until I came into this class. During quarantine, I looked toward my 9 year old sister. She loved quarantine, it was so simple for her: she didn’t have to go to class and all of her siblings were home to play with her all the time. She asks me to play with her every day and she would come up with the weirdest games and the strangest things would pop into her mind. There were certain objects that she would pick up, assume what it was, and be wrong. This helped me to realize the power in not knowing and in having a child’s eye. I tested this out when me and my little sister wanted to make a projector to watch movies outside. We had everything we needed but nothing to hold up a phone. I grabbed a random toy on her floor and it worked perfectly. Without thinking about what it was, I looked at it for its use. It was a toy jump for her horse stable set. I think that having a child’s eye was once what came most naturally to me, but I have lost it slowly over time in the past couple years. I think that I need to work on embracing ambiguity. I am generally a patient person, but I like to know answers. I struggle with anxiety and the main thing that I have to try to accept with it is uncertainty. I think that I can practice embracing ambiguity more by telling myself that it doesn’t matter what happens because everything does work out the way it is supposed to. I think that overall, I learned a lot about myself in this course and how my flaws can actually become strengths and how ambiguity is actually okay. A child’s eye, embracing ambiguity, failing forward, and creative confidence are all things that I continue to work on in the future. 

At the beginning of this semester I was nervous about taking MiDE 300. I would not consider myself an artist, so I was concerned that I would be lacking in the creative and artistic components of the course. I ultimately realized that the MiDE major and course(s) are not solely focused on those components. MiDE 300 , unlike any of my other academic courses, has allowed me to think about creativity, ideas, and major life events differently. 

Before taking this course, I struggled with many of the habits we discussed in MiDE 300. I think that child’s eye and hyper observation came more naturally to me relative to the other three habits. I have always been aware of my surroundings and environment, as well as people’s behaviors and actions. My natural ability to be hyper observant has shaped my academic interests and possible career options. I have always been interested in psychology and sociology, which is related to the way our society and specific individuals think, act, and behave. My observant habits have allowed me to create a deeper understanding of different people and situations. While I have practiced this habit prior to this course, after taking MiDE 300, I think my skill has further developed. I remember the activity where we walked around campus alone and in complete silence. I recognized that while this skill may come more naturally to me and be of interest to me, there are many distractions in our environment that discourage us from being hyper observant.

Also, while hyper observation may come more naturally to me, I did, and I still, struggle with the following habits: failing forward and creative confidence. In the past, I have had difficulty accepting failure, as our society puts a large amount of pressure on individuals to succeed. In many of my classes, we are taught to only put forth the correct answer, rather than to share any ideas that may be relevant. The way in which this class is taught, has allowed me to feel more comfortable sharing my ideas, as there are no correct answers. The failure resume was extremely helpful in evaluating the failures in my life and how they have influenced me today. The ability to reflect and appreciate my failures has encouraged me to become more involved on Bucknell’s campus and apply to different internships and jobs. Additionally, before taking MiDE 300, I was concerned about the creative component of this course and major. However, after taking this course, my creative confidence increased. I realized that there is no proper way to go about a certain assignment and that creativity is not necessarily defined by one’s artistic abilities. I think that creative confidence is still a habit I need to develop further, however, this course has enabled me to push myself in regards to creativity and sharing my ideas.

At the beginning of the semester I thought I was confident with all of the course material. I loved the child’s eye observations as I love focus to detail. I naturally tend to notice things like license plates or ceiling tiles that many others miss. As we moved onto creative confidence, my big ego was able to show off my crazy ideas without that felling of failure. My struggles in this course did not begin until we began to talk about failure and uncertainty. 

MIDE 300 taught me to embrace ambiguity. Before this semester, I would plan out everything, from my class schedule, to training plans, to plans with friends. Halfway through this semester, all my plans were cancelled due to the coronavirus outbreak. I couldn’t make any new plans because we were all so unsure of the future. I could no longer go to class everyday, be on campus, be around people, and my season was cancelled. For the first time in my life, I had no plans and nothing to look forward to. I struggled with this, often feeling alone without my friends or discouraged as I had nothing to look forward to. However, this class changed in order to fit our current situations. We were challenged to create a solution to one of the problems we were facing in our new environments. Mine was my attitude. I learned through this challenge that I had an awful attitude about my current situation. I felt hopeless and isolated in quarantine, so I created a nightly reflection to ensure I was maintaining a positive attitude during these dark times. Over the next few weeks, I focused on this nightly checklist to begin embracing ambiguity. I would go to bed every night not knowing what tomorrow would bring, however, I maintained a positive attitude and reflected on how I could make each next day a little better. 

Currently, all of our lives are on hold. But, one day, coronavirus will pass and we can begin planning the future again. I hope that after this I will be able to embrace ambiguity. As my fears are still present, I hope someday I can look at a struggling job market and economy in the midst of a global pandemic and it doesn’t scare me. The future is uncertain but this class taught us to be creative innovators. Everyday we will wake up with a new problem that we have to solve. Sometimes we won’t know how to solve it, but that’s ok. We will eventually find a solution and adapt as things change. I may get frustrated with this, but to maintain my positive attitude I hope to reflect every night as I did with my checklist. I promise to make everyday better than the last.

One habit that I have resonated most with and one that I feel I have improved immensely on is “Creative Confidence”. Before taking this class I had always found myself distrusting my own ideas whether in brainstorming, planning an event, or even thinking of ways I can make money. I did not allow myself to give new concepts a chance to grow and become anything better to be improved upon. I had always thought that if your initial idea was not a fully functioning and perfect concept then it was not even worth mentioning. Creative Confidence has taught me to give these concepts a chance to develop or to spark a different idea. I have now seen myself use creative confidence in many different forms like considering choosing classes that are out of my comfort zone, trying new activities like baking, and not shutting down ideas in art that I like to create. I most of all want to be able to apply this to creative art and eventually open a small online store to be able to sell what I create. It would have to begin with me being more confident in my idea creating so that I am not hindering my productivity by constantly dwelling on the small things when it is only an idea. 

One habit that I could improve on is embracing ambiguity. I had originally thought I was confident in this area when Mide 300 assigned extremely ambiguous projects. However, I was rudely awakened to realize this was not a skill I had mastered. The current pandemic has taught me, in real life situations, I do not handle ambiguity as well as I had thought. It took me a long adjusting period of confusion and feeling unmotivated to do anything to realize I was not embracing the current situation. I felt lost by not having a routine, not having clear end goals, and having my sense of normality disturbed. This last Mide project helped to bring back some sanity in giving myself a routine by going on daily walks first thing in the morning. It gave me something to keep myself productive and have more energy. I need to train myself to continue applying these brainstorming and prototype creating methods in my normal life when I am faced with ambiguous situations. 

Overall, Mide 300 has genuinely opened my eyes to many new ways of creating, thinking, and innovating. I felt like I have grown both as a student and in other endeavors. I had not considered how so many aspects of one’s life requires skills like brainstorming, child eye, testing and iterating, and many more techniques and habits. Now knowing all the ways I can apply these skills I can see myself continuing to make progress in this growth. 

Throughout the semester, I believe that I have developed upon creative confidence the most. Before this class, I was the type of person that would only voice ideas that I thought were good ideas, or that I knew would work. Nowadays, however, I find myself noting the craziest ideas. For example, I was listening to music while trying to nap one day, and then had an idea for an app. This app would let you add clothes that you have into the “closet” in the app. Then, this would show you different combinations of your outfits in your body by 3D scanning your body beforehand. This would help a lot of people in picking outfits without wasting so much time on trying on clothes. If I had this idea before taking this class, I would most likely ignore it and say that this isn’t possible. However, this class has taught me to have confidence in my ideas and to move forward with them regardless of how crazy the idea might be. In fact, this ties perfectly into embracing ambiguity, which is another habit that has played a big role in my life. I’ve always had trouble with not knowing the outcome of an action. However, through this class, I’ve learned that it’s okay to not know what the end result will be. If it’s a good result, then great, but even if it’s a bad one, you fail forward, you learn something from taking that action. This has helped me be more open to ideas, rather than being afraid of the outcome. With these habits, I’ve learned that I’m more closed minded than I had thought. I always thought of myself as pretty open to ideas, but I’m quick to judge. Although not verbally, I tend to have a specific mind set every time something is introduced to me. While practicing these habits, however, I find myself being more open to ideas and accept the ambiguity brought by it.

Child’s eye or hyper observation is a habit that comes naturally to me. As long as I can remember, I’ve always been the one that’s very conscious about my environment. I’ve probably noticed this about myself because my brother is the opposite. I often notice the smallest things, try to fix a small inconsistency, etc. When our class was doing our walk to experience child’s eye, it felt very familiar. This is because I used to take walks, sometimes with music, just to think and notice things in nature. While I hadn’t done that in a while, it reminded me of how relaxed I felt when taking these walks. Surprisingly, this is the same habit that I want to work on. Although I observe a lot of things with a child’s eye, I want to work on intentionally doing so. After the class walk, I told myself to continue these walks, however, I haven’t been able to. Therefore, I really hope to intentionally practice child’s eye, not just by walking outside, but also on an everyday schedule. Growing with this habit will help me notice the details in ideas and try to unpack these details. It will help me with asking questions about the smallest things. With a concentration in Design Thinking, it will help me empathize a lot with clients and other people. It will help me define the problem by unpacking the problem and asking detailed questions about the problem. Nobody is born with these abilities. I believe that building an innovative character is an ongoing process. It’s a constant loop of testing whether a specific habit helps you look at the world with a more positive, driven attitude. Building an innovative character is also not the same with every person; everyone has a different way of capturing specific habits or conveying ideas. Although these are the main habits we talked about in class, that doesn’t mean that these are the only ones. A lot of habits that will help me become an innovative character, I will learn as I make mistakes (failing forward) and by experiencing the world myself. Overall, these habits are essential in looking at a problem with different perspectives and taking into account all of these perspectives to create a diverse solution.

When looking back on the semester I have greatly progressed in my journey to have more of an innovative mindset. After practicing the main habits for about four months now, I have been able to experience the world in a different way. With a child’s eye, I have gained back a sense of wonder. By embracing ambiguity and failing forward, I have become more comfortable with acceptance and change. Finally, with creative confidence, I learned that the most unrealistic ideas can turn into fantastic realistic ideas once you are confident enough to express it.

 I never really noticed how many bad habits I had been practicing before this class. When looking at the main habits, I didn’t really have any of these prior to this class. Before, I was super stubborn and thought there only had to be one way to do things. During my journey this semester, I have been enlightened and had a pretty big change of mindset. The habit that I believe I progressed with the most over the semester is failing. In the past when I failed at something I would be really sour and give up which is a really negative reaction. Through activities like mind maps and the prototype challenge,  the idea that feedback and time can help fix something to make it better, finally sunk into my system. 

Not going to lie, before taking this class I thought MIDE 300 wasn’t going to be the most beneficial class in my academic journey. However, I was wrong. I have learned more life skills that are far more beneficial than knowing something like what the powerhouse of the cell is. This class challenged me to be more receptive to ideas and that failing is not just okay, it’s probably the best thing that can happen to a project because you can understand what you did wrong and think about how many ways you can do better. Both of these ideas do not have to just apply it to MIDE, but for any class or work project. Overall, these habits not only create an innovative character, but I feel like it overall creates a better person. With a child’s eye, it makes the world seem more interesting. With embracing ambiguity you are now more flexible and ready to change. With failing forward, you have a less negative attitude if something doesn’t go your way and you find ways you can better yourself or something else. Finally, with creative confidence, you develop determination,  even if you are unsure, you are able to keep pushing forward in order to meet your end goal.