By Bo Brueck, H.H. Dow High School
At the opening night of the Michigan Interscholastic Press Association (MIPA) journalism workshop, students listened to a presentation on creativity from MSU Professor Karl Gude.
“Innovation is the result of creativity,” Gude said.
For journalism students, innovation and creativity are key to writing an interesting and informative piece. Informing and entertaining are the purposes of journalism.
“Success is defined as the accomplishment of an aim or purpose,” Gude said.
In order to succeed at their craft students learned that they must step outside of their comfort zones and explore new things. They need to “look at shit” to be inspired.
“If there is discomfort in a room, creativity is often present,” Gude said.
He emphasized that to truly be creative, people have to do the uncomfortable thing, they have to think outside the box and be “that person” who goes against the grain.
“The reluctance to think differently puts us on a runaway train to mediocrity,” Gude said.
Bo, nice article. You summarized Bo’s presentation nicely. As one student journalist to another, remember to not use acronyms such as MSU (in the first graph) without first writing out what it is, do not assume your readers know. The structure was nice, and the number of quotes used were appropriate and enhanced the story nicely. Job well done.
I’d really like to concur with your statement that, in order to excel in creativity and succeed in our craft we must take a step out of our comfort zones; however, I’d like to pose a question? How? As teenagers it’s slightly difficult to be who you truly are without the whole world judging us. We are hesitant to think differently because we are in fact, under a microscope being viewed every second of the day, so how can we escape this never ending train ride to mediocrity?
Perhaps you can write another article following up on removing ourselves from our comfort zone. I will be waiting.