"Action is the foundational key to all success." -Pablo Picasso

Lockers have officially arrived at the Upstairs of South Dining Hall at Kutztown University! My eyes could not believe it when I saw it! The Safe Sack group actually made a difference! We accomplished our goal and it feels fantastic! Now every time Katie Schreck and I go upstairs to eat at South Dining Hall we just have these huge goofy grins on our faces. The first time we actually saw the lockers people thought we were a little crazy because we were jumping up and down!

            We officially turned in project two last Thursday. This semester is just flying by so quickly! I cannot even believe it! Even though I was a little frustrated on Tuesday, I was still happy that we did the peer reviews. I ended up using two academic journal articles. You were only supposed to choose one…… 

Required sources: Locate one scholarly journal article, one book chapter, and one alternative source of your choosing (for instance, a TED talk video, etc.).

Whoops. You see I thought that the one alternative source meant that it could be anything. This is why I was so happy we had the peer review and that Vanessa caught that for me. But I ended up choosing a TED talk video as my third source. Then everything turned out to be fine with my source choices! I chose the video titled Elizabeth Gilbert on Nurturing Creativity. Elizabeth Gilbert argues that writers and creative people should not be afraid of their work and need to find ways to recalibrate. I really enjoyed this TED talk video. Elizabeth Gilbert wrote the book Eat, Pray Love. She originally chose writing as a career because writing is her love, and her fascination of writing.  At the start of her career multiple people had a similar question, and asked if she was worried that she may never have a bestseller book. Being only forty this mind set is a concern to her because she feels she has at least four more decades of writing, and is not ready to stop writing books as a profession.  She said that she was afraid and had this advice to offer “Don’t be afraid. Don’t be daunted.  Do your job.”. I love that quote of Elizabeth Gilbert! Don't be afraid to follow your dreams! If you work hard, some day it will all pay off!!

"Creativity is magical, but it's not magic." -Charles Limb

3/16/11

Yesterday in class we did a creative group activity to get our brains pumping. I was partnered with the lovely safe sack group! The activity was that we had to create a story and each member would add the next sentence until the page was filled. It was quite amazing how our story went from George Harrison to then to Charlie Sheen and then to Miss Kathleen Schreck. Plus it was about George Harrison trying to find the magic ketchup bottle and currently Kathleen Schreck was the owner. Wow! Do we have some come creative brains in the Safe Sack group!

3/17/11

http://blog.ted.com/2011/01/05/your-brain-on-improv-charles-limb-on-ted-com/

Today in class we watched this Ted Blog. Charles Limb is testing creativity in a very unique way. He is testing it through an fMRI scanner and through jazz improvisation. He has a jazz artist come in and memorize a short jazz piece of music for piano. Then he would make them play it in the fMRI scanner to measure their brain activity. Limb would then have them improvise on the jazz combo and measure the differences on their brain activity. The brain shows a lot more activity on the improvised piece of music compared to the memorized piece. Charles Limb also did a similar test but with rap. Once again he would have a rapper come in and memorize a piece of music. Into the scanner they went and the brain activity was measured. The rapper would then free style the rap. Brain activity was more active on the improvisation.  I found it very experiment interesting because am very passionate about music! I also really enjoy jazz music. It’s amazing how people improvise music off the top of their head. That’s something that takes a whole lot of training and hard work. The only negative thing about this experiment was he has only tested two styles of music. Plus he has only tested one type of instrument for jazz. I shared this with a few of my music major friends and they enjoyed it as well!

On Creativity – “You need to have a weird association with the frontal lobe of your brain.” –Charles Limb

"The world is but a canvas to the imagination." -Henry David Thoreau

I have been really enjoying all the creativity exercises that we have been doing in class! For example, with todays exercise with the brainstorming bubble map. It really made you have to think outside of the box. My center bubble was of course, unprotected sacks! My first row of bubbles ended up to be unfair, need lockers, Vanessa, and Aramark. By the time the exercise was over I had a whole truck full of creative words such as hesitant, nervous, unreasonable, organized, artistic, uncomfortable, etc. Then Dr. Morris really threw us for a loop when she said we had to create a statement using only the outside words of our bubble map! I looked at my outside words and froze. How was I supposed to come up with a statement using these crazy words? I mean one of my outside words was groovy!

My completed end statement ended up being: The student’s of Kutztown University are nervous, worried, annoyed, uncomfortable, and hesitant about leaving their personal belongings outside the Cub Café of the South Dinging Hall. These belongings include iPods, Macs, cameras, etc. What will I do with the absence of lockers? How can YOU fix this uneasy feeling to help groovy, fun and artistic me?

I was quite impressed by everyone’s final statement! This activity really got everyone’s creativity side running!

I also enjoyed one of my group member’s final statement: The solution to this giant problem is that the security of our belongings needs to be enforced by guards and/or police.

I especially enjoy her words giant and enforced. They really help pin point the main problem. If I am every stuck on ideas or writing something out I will use the brainstorming bubble approach. I found this creative activity very helpful and useful! Three members of protected sack group and I meshed ours together to create a new statement for our proposal.

Another creative activity I enjoyed was the activity where Dr. Morris provided us with one word and we had to write down the first word that popped into our head. Here are a few of my favorites that I wrote down:

Rage: Black Friday

Justice: Judge Judy

Peace: The Beatles

This was another great activity to get our creative blood pumping! Dr. Morris, once again, I am really enjoying these creativity activities! Please keep them coming!

One last note (haha literally): I enjoyed the music activity! I LOVE classical music and The Flower Duet is a beautiful piece.

Progress!!

On February 10^th, 2011 at 8:30am my group and I were scheduled to meet with Aramark in the Bears Den at the McFarland Student Union Building.  When the clock rolled around to 9am I began to sip my gingerbread latte impatiently.  Our group and I called Aramark and left a voicemail. We then joined the rest of our English Comp class in the library. In the library we worked on little details for our group, when we were meeting up next and such. We created a facebook page for our cause (http://www.facebook.com/home.php#!/pages/Practice-Safe-Sacks/125491284190760).

 When class was over we received a phone call from the Aramark representatives. We must have had our signals crossed because they were in the Student Union Building but in a different location. The people who were representing Aramark were a man and a woman.  We met up and then went to the upstairs of the Bears Den. We all introduced ourselves then began to ask them questions. They seemed nervous at first but once we got to talking they become more at ease in the conversation. They said their main concern for having bags in the dining hall was the stealing of napkin dispensers, salt & pepper shakers, plates, utensils, cups, etc. The upstairs of South Dining Hall has had ten thousand dollars of plates stolen.  REALLY? I couldn’t believe that! I also think that it’s really stupid for people to steal napkin dispensers. They do not mind when people take out fruit or cookies from the dining hall. Our team then suggested getting lockers in between the two double doors. The Aramark people liked our idea of putting lockers outside the upstairs of the South Dining Hall and were going to look more into it. The lockers would be the type where a person would provide their own lock to lock up their items. I personally think it is a wonderful idea! That way the student’s personal belongings will be more secure and less likely to be stolen.  Yay for progress!!