Influence and Creativity Essay

Do you tell yourself that you are not a creative person because you can't draw or play an instrument or write poetry? I often hear many of my clients bemoan, "I'm not creative!"

Orange you glad I’m an orange? Oranges, according to various quizzes and charts, tend to be the most creative and artistic of the four personality types. When creativity comes to mind, I think of how much of an impact it has made one my life and my choices leading up to today.

For the entirety of the fall semester, I took on a project to create a three-page layout for a fictional campaign in National Geographic magazine about endangered species. The goal was to create different content for my portfolio, challenging my skills in photography and photo-manipulation. I transformed people into animals and used gel lighting and Photoshop to create my artwork (see Appendix A figure 1 & 2). At the end of the semester, I reviewed my completed pieces and two theorists best fit my creative process, Julie Burstein, and Teresa Amabile. Julie Burstein discusses the best way to foster creativity is by ‘letting go’ she outlines this in four lessons (Campbell and Dubois, “Artist Best practices” 25). These lessons include experiences, challenges, limitations and loss (Campbell and Dubois, “Artist Best practices” 25). While Teresa Amabile discusses how the theory of creativity is fostered through her componential model of creativity (Campbell and Dubois, “On theories of” 14). These include domain-relevant skills, creative thinking skills and motivation (Campbell and Dubois, “On theories of” 14). Both of these theorists go hand in hand providing me with the framework for my best work. This essay will discuss how Amabile’s theory for intrinsic motivation and Burstein’s lesson of experience and loss, align in my creative process to be conducive to my work.

Poets and writers who lived in America during the 1800’s lived in a time of new beginnings and a time in which they could create their own version of literature. Edgar Allen Poe did that and even more during his lifetime. He put a lot of effort into making his poems memorable to his audience and give them something to think about. During his lifetime not many people took notice of Poe’s genius, but Charles Baudelaire definitely did. Poe had a way with word that was both terrifying and exciting. There is hardly a single one of his poems or his short stories that do not keep the reader on the edge of their seat until the end. Many other writers have attempted to reach these heights and Charles was one of these to do so. He spent a great deal of his writing career mimicking Poe’s style and themes allowing his work to be forever associated with Poe’s. Inspiration is a tricky thing and can have a profound effect on someone who is trying to continue on a legacy by forming it into their own version of what the original writer was trying to achieve. Poe died very young and this effected Baudelaire along with his writings. This is not at all uncommon within the world of literature there have been so many different writers and poets who have changed the course of literary history through the brilliance of their own writings and the people they surrounded themselves with. The effect Poe had on Charles is visible throughout

Classifying people into distinct groups plays a significant role in the establishment of social perceptions. Common problems in the society such as discrimination, prejudice, and intergroup conflicts are attributed to the categorization of individuals and groups. Portioning people into discrete units is a part of the social classification. These differences result in severe issues in society, for example, conflicts and favoritism, if the perceived differences are not addressed. People overlooking the fact that individuals can be members of a particular group even when they are not seen in the context of others is the primary cause of

As people who live in today’s society, it has become a social norm for us to divide things into categories. We enjoy grouping and separating things depending on their similarities and differences. We have made a pastime out of juxtaposing and dissecting all that an individual ‘carries’ with them. Be it the physical, the emotional, or even the subconscious. People are consistently categorized into groups, which include social categories, gender categories, political categories and many more. People are also grouped depending on their likes and interests. Whether they prefer cats to dogs, or pop music to country music, everything has developed a label, so to speak. Such categorizing makes people feel as if they belong to something. It can also make a person feel safe when they know what group they belong to. It could allow for easier communication between individuals of the same group. What we do not realize as a society is that grouping and categorizing individuals creates a hierarchy that puts many people at a disadvantage. That is the message that both Peggy McIntosh and Judith Lorber are trying to convey in their essays about gender and race hierarchies. I agree with both of McIntosh and Lorber’s essays. I think that this is a problem that should be solved and that we, as a society should face together.

It begins before a child takes their first breath, and it continues throughout their life. People are classified, we are classified. We are classified, categorized, ordered, divided, indexed and ranked. This lifelong occurrence classifies us in numerous ways, which influence, if not assign or destine, many aspects of the lives in which we live. The things that make up the people who we are, the things that make us, “us,” are often the same things that are exploited to categorize us. We are categorized by our race, religion, ethnicity, education, geographic location, disability, age, biological sex, sexual orientation and gender. We are categorized by who we identify as, who we are, our gender identity. We are categorized by who we who are attracted to, who we love, our sexual orientation. Who we are and how we are classified are unavoidably intertwined. As the person we grow to become, and the

In our world today, media and advertisements can be found anywhere. By age 18, a teenager will have seen 350,000 commercials (heartofleadership.org) People are so easily influenced by iconic people or brands. Brands like Nike, constantly have celebrities advertising their product and have millions of followers. The iconic celebrities have convinced the market that they need that product to be “cool” like them. Jim Morrison once said “Whoever controls the media, controls the mind”. This quote can be seen as quite true. In our culture today, we are born predispositioned to media influence. As a child we looked up to media unknowingly, “65% say that shows like The Simpsons and Married… With Children encourage kids to disrespect parents.” (heartofleadership.org). People can have a huge effect on how people think through the media, and it becomes a powerful thing. A person like Micheal Jordan who was an endorser of Nike is given over $20,000,000 a year because of the influence he can have. Micheal Jordan isn’t the only one to have influences a large amount of people. In 1751, a Pastor names Jonathan Edwards was determined to shake the people of his time back into religious devotion. His sermon is now

Recently in my English course, our professor gave us an assignment in which we had to write an essay as if we were Native Americans meeting the Spaniards for the first time. When we wrote our first draft of our essays, we inter-changed amongst ourselves in order to peer-edit our rough drafts. As I received my essay, in which I thought I had done a great job writing, back I noticed a lot of the errors I had committed. Luckily, my classmates corrected them for me and made various suggestions to improve my essay.

Humans love to consider that they are the only intelligent beings on earth. They hold their accomplishments in engineering and art as evidence that each human is an intelligent, complex creature, somehow more advanced than any other species on earth, and yet, supposedly unintelligent organisms, like ants, can create very complex structures that would seem to require intelligence. This concept is explored in Steven Johnson’s essay “The Myth of the Ant Queen,” where he presents the idea that intelligence is not a property of the individual, but is instead a property of groups. There are also however many examples of individuals creating things that appear to require individual intelligence. In Thomas Lethem’s

Nursing is a profession where there is many areas that need nurses to become influential in order to help change current practices that have been overlooked. One area that should be considered is pay inadequacies within the nursing practice. All nurses deserve to be respected and treated like professionals. In order to ensure that this message is taken seriously, a multistep look at the message is needed. Deciding on an issue, choosing who the recipients are, where to send it to, choosing the appropriate method to share the message, sending the message and following up on the sent message are all very important steps.

This consumerist impulse threatens our creativity everyday whether we realize it or not; when shopping for our goods, researching a new art project or a school paper, even looking for a place to eat. Our consumerist culture is one of the main sources that prevent us from truly expressing our own creativity. It distracts us from executing our own ideas, deprives our stimulation of creativity, rationalizes (excuses) the idea that we are investing more into our work, and gives false hope of completing our creative

Have you ever wondered what influences us to behave the way we do? Look a certain way? Or even looked for an explanation to what causes us to apply a certain perspective regarding personal and controversial issues? One of the answers to these questions may revolve around the influence we absorb from celebrities. A definitive term for celebrity is an iconic figure to a category or group who has achieved success in one or multiple aspects of their lives. As a result, these individuals have drawn in publicity and fame. Over the years with the advances in media and other forms of communication, celebrities have become topics of discussion worldwide, rather if it’s at school, with colleagues or at the dinner table, it is fair to say that

Compartmentalized Creativity Combine an eye-catchingly vague thumbnail image with a somewhat thought provoking headline donning the word “Creativity” and there is a 95% chance readers will think you’re an asshole.

It is easy to say that a parent has had the most influence on your life, they taught you how to walk, talk, drink and among many other things hopefully right from wrong. A good parent is there for you most of your life, quick to lend a hand or offer advice (unless it’s your mother-in-law) when needed, but the trait that impacted my life the most was the integrity my father exhibited with me and the people lucky enough to have met him.