Week 2 Recap

What’cha been up to? 

A lot of things happened this week, both on a personal level and academic level. I won’t be talking much about my personal life here, since this blog wasn’t meant for that. But I’ll share some of my college life. The second week went by so quickly, which really surprises me. I feel like it’ll be the end of the semester within a blink of an eye!  

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What I Learned This Week

We’ve been reading this book called Made to Stick, which was written by Chip Heath and Dan Heath. I definitely recommend it for anyone who wants to come up with ideas that will stick. One of the things I’ve learned from this reading is the importance of good ideas. There’s a reason why we humans are able to remember some stories/ideas so well, and forget the rest. The book had mentioned that including sensory and concrete details is what helps make an idea really stick with us. I thought this very much applies to me in my everyday life, as a person and as a student. And some of the stories that the book as mentioned, such as the Kidney Heist, The Boyfriend Death, and the story of Bethany Hamilton, has really stuck to me. 

Another thing I’ve learned throughout this week is that coming up with a capstone idea is kind of hard. I think most would expect ideas to come easy for art students, but I’m not gonna lie, it was a bit difficult to come up with an idea, especially since there’s so many possibilities! 

I’ve also learned that not all of my ideas are going to be good, and it won’t always click with others—and that’s okay. I’ve also learned how helpful it is to do simple mind-maps or the exaggeration exercises that my professor had us do. The exaggeration exercise was basically thinking about our ideas by asking these 4 different questions:

1. What would our idea look like if it were 1000x bigger?
2. What would our idea look like if it were 1000x smaller?
3. What if our capstone project was due at the end of class?
4. What if our capstone project was due in 3 years?

These exercises helped me get out of my tiny box and think about different possibilities for my idea. Some ideas that I came up with were as big as having a company, and as small has just a simple logo design.

And one more thing that I’ve learned this week was that I was not the only one who came up with a mental health app for a capstone project. I realized how common the idea was amongst my classmate, so I decided to scrap that idea from my list of ideas.

How I Feel about My Ideas

How do you feel about your idea/s so far? Are you excited? Do you think it needs more thought or to be expanded?

I’ll be honest—I feel somewhat hesitant about my ideas, mostly because I feel so uncertain that it’s a grand idea. I’m still in between two of my ideas: a custom cakes app or a custom plushies website. I can’t say I’m extremely ecstatic about my ideas. I feel good about them, but I definitely think either idea could be more elaborate. 

My Future Goals (Next Few Weeks)

Here are my goals for the next few weeks:

• Take care of myself
• Work on making my ideas more elaborate, think outside the box
• Be more open to new and different ideas
• Practice more mind-mapping
• Ask questions
• Develop a strategy of how to tackle my projects

And that’s it, folks!

That’s all I have for this week’s update. See you in the next post!