Current undergraduate students

Thursday, February 21, 2019

A stroke of creativity

Think back to your first swimming lesson, or the first time you went to the pool. Did you jump in with both feet right away? If so, how did that go? Likely, you got in slowly, or if you decided to take the leap, hopefully someone caught you before you got into trouble. Now think of an Olympic swimmer like Katie Ledecky or Penny Oleksiak. How do they get in the water at the start of a race? When the buzzer goes off, there’s no time to use the ladder.

A thesaurus groups together words that are similar in meaning. It exists for those tip-of-the-tongue moments when the right word seems just out of reach: “Gah! I need another word for something that’s pretentious … to be pretentious, to put on airs … Ah! An affectation!”

Take a minute and think back to when you were a little kid. Did you have a favourite book? Was there one story that your parents had memorized because you asked for it to be read so often? These short stories for tiny people might appear simple and easy to write; however, I would argue they take a great deal of skill to create. The authors breathe life into colourful characters of all shapes and sizes, and for that, they deserve some credit and applause.

When was the last time you sat down with a pen and paper, and just wrote something? I’m talking about you and your own creativity, no prompt whatsoever. I can guess what you’re thinking. University is busy and finding time is hard. Why use a pen and paper when everything is handed in electronically? Why would someone use writing as a break from more writing? These are valid thoughts, but before you tune out, let me tell you about my notebook, and why pen and paper have become my best friends over the past few years.

It’s December! You know what that means right? The holiday season is right around the corner. From Hanukah to Kwanzaa December is a time for family get-togethers and lots of food. So in the spirit of the holiday season, I decided to look up holiday-themed books (and by holiday-themed, I mean books that have a certain holiday as a key part of the plot) and was very disappointed with what I found. Holiday-themed books appear to be synonymous with Christmas books.