Incubate over break to prepare for winter quarter
Photo by Katherine Rountree
Written by Amy Stoltenberg
“Creative people tend to work in spurts. We have times of high production and down times when we don’t seem to do much. But actually, the down times can be just as productive as the up times,” said Professor Scott Thorp, who teaches the Creative Thinking Strategies class here at SCAD. Thorp encourages students to use the time over winter break to relax while letting their creative juices recharge.
Said Thorp, “My students’ favorite step in the creative process is incubation. Incubation is when we stop working on a project and do something else — basically, taking a break. It could be getting a cup of coffee or going skiing. During these times, ideas are still floating around in our brains; they just aren’t yet in our conscious brain.”
After these times of recharging, artists often will have moments of insight, or that magic “eureka” moment.
“Without incubation, our ideas will be more straightforward and ordinary,” said Thorp. “Creative ideas need time to develop.”
Between quarters is when everything that students have learned in the past three months has a chance to really settle in, incubating free from the stress of class projects and deadlines. Below are some tips Thorp offers for recharging for next quarter:
— Think of your creative pursuit as a lifelong one, not a quarter-oriented one. This strings all your creative activities together so you work toward a larger goal.
— Reflect on what you learned during the quarter. Studies state that only 10 percent of classroom content is retained by students. That means 90 percent of what you paid for is gone. Reflecting is a great way to retain more of your experiences during the quarter. Make lists of the most important concepts or lessons from the quarter. Then make another list of best practices. These lists go under the heading of “meta learning.” The term, coined by Donald B. Maudsley, is defined as “the process by which learners become aware of and increasingly in control of habits of perception, inquiry, learning, and growth that they have internalized.”
— Set long-term goals for the next quarter.
— Play creative games. We learn lots of deep lessons from the act of playing, from flexibility to collaboration. The trick is to play games that promote creativity. Candy Crush is not one of these.
To find more information and news about creativity, visit Thorp’s blog.
