The Student Leader Blog

School Killed My Creativity but I Got It Back!

I'm hooked on listening to the Stanford Entrepreneurial Thought Leaders Podcasts. Every time I travel, I download a few to bring with. Each podcast runs about one hour and are presented by top thinkers in the entrepreneurial world. I think of them as my free weekly Stanford classroom lessons.

My latest lesson was "Young at Heart: How to Be an Innovator for Life" by Tom Kelley of the world-renowned design firm IDEO.

Through some great personal stories, Kelley gives a series of suggestions to make sure we remember to play in the right brain (our creative side).

- "Think Like a Traveler" - I recently traveled to SE Asia and when I first stepped off the plane in Bangkok, all my senses came alive. I noticed what the airport smelled like, the lighting, the advertisements, the bathrooms, the money, the coins, the door handles, the stores, the air, the trees, etc etc etc. At home, I'm much different. My senses operate on autopilot because I've "been there, done that." Thinking like a traveler allows us to be more present in the moment and to notice our surroundings. Even the stuff we think we know really well. And, in noticing, we'll start to discover new ways of thinking. Kelley also says that thinking like a traveler allows us to hold up our world view against what's actually happening.

- "Be Childlike" - Being creative is about releasing your inner child. School does a great job of focusing on the left brain, and so it's our job to keep the right brain open and fresh. As a student leader, all of your "out of the classroom" work provide great opportunities to use the right brain.

- "Think of Life as an Experiment and be Willing to Fail Forward" - Scientists get excited about failing because it means they've crossed off another possible solution. Be willing and excited about failing as long as it means it allows you to check another possibility off your list so you keep moving forward. Kelley tells the story of WD-40. WD stands for Water Displacement which makes sense, but what does the 40 stand for? Bonus points to the first person to share the answer in the comments below.

- "Finding Your Creative Hour" - I don't drink caffeine, but when I wake up in the morning I'm wired for action. I often do most my reading and writing in the first two hours after waking because I feel amazingly creative. When's your creative hour? Kelley says finding your creative hour is like finding gold, but so many of us waste our best creative hour on our inbox. I don't open my email or internet until two hours after I wake up. Those two hours are my golden creative hours and a gift that is lost if I don't use them.

If I had to pick one of these four tips as the most important, I'd pick the last one. Spend some time over the next couple days to figure out when is your creative hour (and post it in the comments below). Then, once you've found it, grab a book or start a blog and never let go of that time.

All Work and No Play Makes Yours a Dull Group

Look at me whipping out an idiomatic expression again. Though I’m not sure if a parody of a quote from a creepy movie I never even saw counts…

So this post is about fun. Are you getting enough? Are you giving your team enough? With all the forms you have to fill out and the rules you have to memorize, your fun drive may be a tad low, but once you get started having fun, it gets addictive enough that you don’t have to try too hard. 

Fun comes in all shapes and sizes. As they say - it’s not the size of your budget that counts, but how you use it. Fun can be a huge party or a carnival type thing, complete with cotton candy and inflatable jousting rings, or it could be a game you play with your team for $0.00 (e.g. Morton’s Lite).

Download Mortons_Lite.pdf

You could redecorate your office together, walk backwards, meet in a park under sprinklers, have a random costume day, play flash mob games, come up with wacky themes for your meetings, create a theme song for your group, make YouTube videos together, put glitter on your forms, play some music, or just share some jokes.

Side effects of fun include bonding, looking forward to school, greater team loyalty, more creativity and innovation, and bigger smiles.

The point is that fun is fun, and we should have it whenever and wherever possible… because it’s fun, and life is short.

Google up your office.

If you're lucky enough to have an office for your group, get a little Googley and take advantage of the luxury. The way your office looks says a lot about your group and can play a big role in how your group members feel. When I finally got an office for my organization last year it ended up seeing very little action because most people were choosing the cozy, couch-filled room next door over the white walls and high ceilings of our new space. However, we did have one memorable meeting in there when we decided to "spruce" it up with temporary decorations until it was no longer recognizable. Oh, and there was that time that one of the writers of this blog (I won't name names) was thrown into the wall, leaving a very distinguished looking dent in the sheet rock.

Anyway, though I never got to try this to the extreme, I am a big fan of getting everyone involved in creating an identity for the space and getting really creative with it. Cheap sprucers include funky lights, rugs, sheets, pillows, plants, and magazine clippings. My friend works for a company that has a wall full of black and white portrait photos of each employee representing their unique personalities. One room at Hunter had bare, white walls until they had a contest for the best mural and ended up with an 8 foot purple robot painting. Bookcases, couches, water coolers, TVs, computers, chalkboards, corkboards, and minifridges are also nice additions, if you have the budget. Many groups don't realize just how much their schools are willing to fund to promote student engagement and reduce unsightly surpluses (whoops, that last part must have been a typo). For a bit of inspiration, check out Google's idea of a good office environment:

Ask and Ye Shall Receive: a not-so-novel approach to recruitment

I've never been good at remembering expressions or using them appropriately (e.g. "don't put the cart before the horse," or "don't put all your eggs in one basket"). I'll inevitably screw them up somehow and very confidently say something like "don't put all your eggs before the horse."  Well, there's an expression that I should have tried out earlier than later that goes something like "ask and ye shall receive, seek and ya shall find."

It worked for the Bible (or at least so I hear) and it works for recruitment, as evidenced by the fact that this blog has gone from have 2 writers to 6 (soon to be 7) in a little over a week. What was my technique? I started seeking out promising students on Facebook (by looking for student government groups) and asking the leaders to write for the blog (until Facebook accused me of spamming), I sent a mass email to all student leaders at my own college, and I basically started telling everyone I could think of that I was recruiting for the blog. It was the mouse technique that I scoffed at in my last recruitment post, and apparently it works! All this time, I had been focusing on convincing a few people I knew to write and totally forgetting about the many amazing people that I had not met or thought of yet.

The other thing I've learned (or perhaps re-learned because I have a sneaking suspicion that I had already smacked myself on the forehead for this) is that you never know who will be right for your organization. For example, Steve DeSiena (sorry to point you out, Steve), is a perfect fit for this blog, but I honestly never thought to ask him directly because I figured that he was too busy and too funny to want to get involved. The forehead smack came when he responded to a mass email I sent, saying that he was interested AND knew someone else who'd be a good fit (Mike Sharp - who is a perfect addition).

The moral of this blog:
You never know who will hatch out of which egg, so put all the eggs into the basket, stick the basket in the cart, and get the horse to go asking because he'll eventually find what he's searching for. Got it?

P.S. Please welcome Nick Chapa, Steve DeSiena, Mike Sharp, and (soon to publish) Kody Tinnel!

New Non Profit Helps Students Pay Back Loans for Service

My name is Jonathon Lunardi and I am the director of a new non profit called Charity for Debt. I am 29 years old and have always been involved helping student communities from my time running the Sooner Information Network at OU to building tools for Student Government’s across the nation. Recently, a buddy of mine and I came up with an innovative non profit model that we hope will also help students, Charity for Debt.

Charity for Debt is simple, we pay you $20/hour to work for a charity / non profit in your local community. Sounds great right? You get to help a worthy cause by volunteering and get paid, but there is one catch, we don’t pay you directly so you can buy movies and itunes, we help protect your financial future by paying off your student loan. So, you give charity, for debt paid off. Student loan debt can be a major cause of financial debt and can hurt your potential to purchase investments, houses, or wedding rings in the future. Paying off the principal loan debt with money from Charity for Debt can save you thousands of dollars of interest, plus you get to feel good about what you are doing instead of flipping burgers on the side.

If you are interested in this opportunity, Charity for Debt is taking applications for the first pilot program. We have already raised $8,000 of the $10,000 needed to begin. So, log on (http://www.charityfordebt.org) and add your application today, it only takes a second. It doesn’t matter where you live as long as it is in the U.S. and you can be a current student or recent grad, as long as you have over $5,000 in student loan debt.

Sign up and help us spread the word! The more applications we have submitted, the easier it is for us to raise awareness and ultimately money to pay off student loan debt!

To view the website, visit us at: http://www.charityfordebt.org

Facebook group: http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=25714165653

What happens when a student gets to be a teacher?

I just got an email from Hunter College saying that I will be able to teach up to 6 classes of Freshman Orientation in the Fall, and I am very excited (see photo of me and my cat Loki, who is also very  excited).  When I applied for the position, it was a bit of a pie-in-the-sky effort since a Master's degree is generally needed, and my teaching experience is limited, but here I am now, preparing my curriculum.

The best part of this is that there are very few standards for this class, so I will really have the opportunity to get creative and take advantage of my own experiences orienting myself and other students in college. Ideally, this should be a class about how to get the most out of college.
Here are the ideas that I'm considering:

- do a scavenger hunt to get to know the college and one another
- discuss web 2.0 tools and networking resources
- discuss learning and memory strategies
- run a class blog of Hunter College tips, tricks, and resources
- talk about impression formation and have everyone write down their first impressions in the beginning of the course to see how much our perceptions of people and environments change
- come up with a bunch of club ideas and go through whole planning and executing process
- have each student do a presentation on something he/she loves
- improve group work skills by having people do something cool in groups (don't know what yet)
- have students revise the curriculum with me

Anyone have suggestions on what you wish you would have been taught/would have experienced in your freshman year? I would LOVE to get some feedback and ideas. I'll even give you extra credit.

Do I sound like a teacher already?

How (not) to lull your students to sleep within the first 10 minutes of class.

I just got off the phone with my friend Maya, who got me thinking about the mind-numbingly boring classes that I've had to sit through (and sleep through) in college. After telling me an all too familiar tale of a teacher, a PowerPoint presentation, and a class full of blank stares, she said:

"Imagine walking into the classroom one day with all the desks cleared out and cups of tea for everyone."

So I did, and I got very excited--first of all because I love tea, and second of all because I started thinking about what influence we, as student leaders, can have inside the classroom. How about we try to influence the professor and not the students for a change and see what happens?

Here are some fairly non-intrusive ideas off the top of my head:

- Do at-your-desk yoga in the middle of class.
- Start a student blog or forum.
- Have students take turns bringing in snacks for the whole class.
- Have people make name tags including a fun fact about each student.
- Play music in the classroom.
- Switch up the seating (moving the desks into a circle is my personal favorite)
- Pick a random day on which everyone has to wear the same color.
- Hold the class off campus (like in a park, a cafe, or an amusement park).
- Have people decorate the classroom (with movable decorations).
- Put tablecloths on each desk.
- Teach from the other end of the classroom (just for the heck of it).
- Bring a beach ball and throw it around during class.
- Have the class shout something every time someone says a particular word.
- Have the class plan a lesson that the professor has to teach.

Okay, so all this won't necessarily make the lecture more interesting, but it will give students something to bond over, talk to their friends about, and remember about college. Plus you can open a professor's eyes to new, unchartered pedagogical grounds.

The credit whore and the invisible visionary: giving and getting due credit.

I had just spent an entire evening at my job polishing a presentation of an idea I had, with the care and love of a true brain parent, when my coworker bounded up to my desk.
"I've got a great idea!" he said and proceeded to describe it with bubbling enthusiasm. Within a few words I realized that it was nearly identical to my own. I quickly minimized the window bearing my presentation and paused for an imperceptible moment to work out the fresh dilemma in my head.

Should I tell him that his idea was one I had had weeks ago and was now sitting patiently inside my PowerPoint file? Or should I reward his willingness to get involved and bring ideas to the table by giving him the credit?

If I say I had already thought of it, it could be a kick in the gut of his enthusiasm. But if he takes credit my organization doesn't see my own initiative. So what matters more?

"That's a great idea," I said, and he beamed. We proceeded to flesh out his idea, just as I had done with my identical one, only now it was even stronger and more vivid. This was now our idea, and it was even better.

When it came time to present we had that lovely embarrassing exchange of "he thought of it," "no, no she thought of it," and everyone was happy.

P.S. The image in this post does NOT look like me or my coworker.

Brainstorming strategies and what Tyler Cowen doesn't know because he's thinking all by himself.

In his book Discover Your Inner Economist: Use Incentives to Fall in Love, Survive Your Next Meeting, and Motivate Your Dentist (which I find infuriating and backward but a fun read nonetheless), Tyler Cowen mentions his economically based assessment that group brainstorming is self deception. In his view two brains are more diluted than one, and the only reason we like to brainstorm in groups is to let others do all the work for us while we sit back and pretend we're participating.

Sorry Tyler Cowen, but that's just not true. Over the past two days, I've been lucky enough to get soaked in two brainstorms (one with two people, and the other with four--both very successful and gratifying).

In both instances, something particular to group brainstorming happened: one flimsy little idea grew exponentially and exploded into hundreds of new ideas. The little ideas whirled about, settling on different people's back burners, and the larger and more solid ideas bounced off one another like determined sumo wrestlers. The strongest of the bunch merged into one big idea again, but this time solid like a chunk of metal. And then the brainstorming members set to work chiseling away at it until it was a beautiful sculpture.

Thinking alone, my idea had only a few directions it could take. I was pretty stuck and uninspired. With the group, ideas were suddenly shooting out of my head uninterrupted. That's what brainstorming is supposed to be; something new and unexpected has to happen. It's almost like a chemical reaction--there's oxygen and then there's hydrogen, then all of a sudden there's water.

Of course, there are also good brainstorming sessions and bad brainstorming sessions. Cowen writes that the worst thing to do is make people share their ideas one at a time or to set a time limit. This part I'll agree with. In my experience, the best things happen when ideas can flow uninterrupted. Here are the guidelines I keep in mind:

IN THE IDEA GENERATING PHASE

• The number one rule is not to criticize anything in this phase.
• Have someone jot down all the ideas (choose a fast writer).
• Keep an eye out for people who have been cut off-- be sure you ask them what they were about to say.
• Don't call on anyone to speak unless they look particularly ready.
• Give a lot of positive feedback to stimulate more ideas.
• Try to lead the group into a rhythm or a steady pace.
• Ask follow up questions to get juicier ideas.

IN THE IDEA SELECTING PHASE

• Determine if someone will have final say and make sure the selection process is clear to every member.
• Discuss what the needs and resources are.
• Review all of the ideas that have been presented.
• Here you can discuss how effective and doable you think each idea will be (but, of course, never actually insult an idea)
• Once an idea has been selected, make sure everyone understands what it is and feels comfortable.

THE IDEA DEVELOPMENT PHASE

• Now that you are down to one idea, you can begin tearing it apart a bit more fiercely.
• Determine who will play what role in the idea and exactly what resources are needed.
• Put together a clean outline and work out all the kinks.
• Decide when the idea will be implemented, by whom, and who else should know about it.

THE IDEA ENJOYMENT PHASE

• Enjoy!