Blog entry was written by Annabel Cox on May 27th, 2020
To prepare for this week's meeting, Ben asked us to fill out a brainstorming sheet to help get us thinking about possible project ideas. The brainstorm included some fun and silly questions like “what is your greatest fear?” But, actually, thinking about current events, genres, and people that interest me and deserve more thorough exploration was a very helpful way to get a handle on what I might want to devote my summer to. The activity we did during our Wednesday zoom meeting also gave me inspiration. We were put in two breakout rooms and we read each other our brainstorm sheets. Then, we had rapid fire sessions of throwing out ideas beginning with “what if you...”. The ideas could be as crazy or realistic as we wanted and were supposed to be spontaneous, but I found myself and my fellow students had a hard time stopping ourselves from over-thinking.
Our assignment for next week is to come up with three possible topics which we will share with the rest of the group. Right now I’m thinking about looking at the difference between one’s perception of themselves versus how others see them, future technologies that will allow us to read each other's minds (á la Elon Musk’s Neuralink), or interviewing my grandma who lived in Oklahoma during the Dust Bowl and connecting that to our current environmental crisis. We also got the exciting news that all three of the authors we voted on agreed to come talk to us! We will each receive a copy of their latest books to read before we get the chance to meet them, ask questions, and get advice on our own writing.
To prepare for this week's meeting, Ben asked us to fill out a brainstorming sheet to help get us thinking about possible project ideas. The brainstorm included some fun and silly questions like “what is your greatest fear?” But, actually, thinking about current events, genres, and people that interest me and deserve more thorough exploration was a very helpful way to get a handle on what I might want to devote my summer to. The activity we did during our Wednesday zoom meeting also gave me inspiration. We were put in two breakout rooms and we read each other our brainstorm sheets. Then, we had rapid fire sessions of throwing out ideas beginning with “what if you...”. The ideas could be as crazy or realistic as we wanted and were supposed to be spontaneous, but I found myself and my fellow students had a hard time stopping ourselves from over-thinking.
Our assignment for next week is to come up with three possible topics which we will share with the rest of the group. Right now I’m thinking about looking at the difference between one’s perception of themselves versus how others see them, future technologies that will allow us to read each other's minds (á la Elon Musk’s Neuralink), or interviewing my grandma who lived in Oklahoma during the Dust Bowl and connecting that to our current environmental crisis. We also got the exciting news that all three of the authors we voted on agreed to come talk to us! We will each receive a copy of their latest books to read before we get the chance to meet them, ask questions, and get advice on our own writing.