Education is such an important aspect of our lives. As millennials, we are raised with the idea that without a good education, we won’t be able to go too far in life or be successful. I believe that is true, to a certain extent. Without a college degree, a person is often limited to the amount of money they can make or types of jobs they can pursue. Education, therefore, is a beautiful thing. But what happens after spending years and years in classrooms, abiding by strict rules that are set in place by professors? We have all been there, trying to solve math equations that seem nearly impossible or write the perfect history essay that your teacher with a crazy rubric assigned. Taking this into account, is it possible to still generate creativity as a college student?
Creativity, like our education, is such a valuable aspect of life. Being creative means exploring, gaining new experiences, trying different things and expanding our minds. Throughout my college experience, every assignment that I have been given has always been given with strict detail and precision to a point that I could never easily go out of my comfort zone and become creative. I feel that college restricts our ability to use our creativity, which results in the loss of our creative abilities.
“Creativity isn’t a test to take, a skill to learn or a program to develop. Creativity is seeing things in new ways, breaking barriers that stood in front of you for some time,” 14 year old Line Dalile, a student and writer, says in an article on the Huffington Post. “Creativity is the art of hearing a song that has never been written or seeing a work of art on empty canvas. Its essence is in its freshness and the ability to make dreams come to life.”
If a 14 year old can see the importance of being creative, then why can’t many of our professors? There are so many different techniques to use student’s creativity that would benefit both the professor and the student. Incorporating aspects like art and music to a lesson can make the students more attentive, which would be a reason for the students to produce better assignments. These better assignments would then result in better grades, and the better grades would result in a much happier and less stressed students.
Stress is such a common word in the language of college students. I can not remember a week in my college years that I did not feel some sort of stress or pressure building up because of the amount of work that our professors give out to us. If professors spent more time teaching in ways that let us as students express ourselves and engage in our creative abilities, we would be less likely to be so stressed out in what are supposed to be the best four years of our lives. Studies show that when being creative, your stress levels reduces.
So, my advice to you as a college student struggling to get through these stressful upcoming weeks is to get creative! Stop letting the confines of our college education eliminate our ability to be creative. Doodle in your notebook, draw an exquisite picture of your dog, or simply go about a project in a different, more creative way than your professor has assigned. It is so important to keep our creative juices flowing while we are in a period of our lives when our creativity is often repressed.
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