What America needs most is more light bulbs.
Not the typical 60-watt bulb, nor the kind that flickers endlessly before turning on. Instead, America needs sources of energy, of light, of ideas that, once illuminated, forever change the landscape of the way we move, think or communicate. What we need is creativity.
Back in high school, creativity was my mantra. The typical math and science student, I decided to go a little crazy and take photography during my junior year, and it completely altered my conceptions of what it takes to make it in the real world.
“Human computers can be imported from India and China,” my photo teacher once told us, “but to prove to your employer that you have a skill that can’t be outsourced, you must learn to think creatively.”
So I adopted this as my life motto: Think outside the box or you will find eventually yourself living in one. Coming to Duke, though, I started to feel the need to revise my life motto: If you find connections or land the job, you can forget about the box.
Or so I thought—until I read a column in The New York Times by Walter Isaacson on the genius behind Steve Jobs. His genius wasn’t the logical or analytical genius of Einstein. Instead, it was intuitive, impulsive and simply daring. It was a genius fit for the 21st century. He bridged the gap between analytical thinking, traditionally considered to be intelligence, and the innovative spirit that ventures beyond what can be useful to the world, to what can be revolutionary.
Yes, some people are simply more prone to think creatively than others—but these are not just the artists and inventors you scoff at on your way to your next consulting interview. These are the individuals that, while they may be experts in a particular fields, seek to learn as much as they can about pretty much everything else. They ask themselves how music can be scientific, how language can be studied in a lab and how computers can become works of art.
Believe it or not, school can help with this type of thinking—you don’t have to be a college dropout to be the next great innovator. A liberal arts education is designed to help an individual broaden their knowledge in both the humanities and sciences, not as separate entities but as spheres of knowledge that overlap.
This fusion is supposed to represent the goals of those T-Reqs our advisors are always bugging us about. But much too often, I see English majors looking for the QS class offered as a joke or hear engineers asking if you really have to do any writing for this ALP. And this attitude puzzles me because in high school, not so long ago, there were no such thing as majors, and everyone had to take a class in almost every field, whether we wanted to or not.
We have really only one chance to make the most out of a liberal arts education, to delve into areas that we would seldom come across after college. So why are we so scared of being true “Renaissance men?”
Well, we shouldn’t be. We have the rest of our lives to focus on our chosen field of knowledge; we have graduate school, medical school and jobs for that.
The situation in our country right now does not look too bright. In addition to being in an economic slump, we seem to be in a psychological one, as well. Paralyzed by the fear of incompetence, or the scars of failure, we have brushed aside the stories of those who have risen out of failure and hardship to become great, viewing them as mere fairy tales.
Our generation faces the difficult task of creating something out of almost nothing. We must take up the legacy of the innovator that is no longer among us, and create our own Jobs.
It’s a daunting task. But at times like these, the child in me remembers the words of one of my favorite characters of all time, who was once in a similar situation: “Think of it this way: every great wizard in history has started out as nothing more than we are right now, students. If they can do it, why not us?”
Realistically, the greatest of ideas don’t always begin as light bulbs. Behind every great idea is a creative process that requires time and energy. And once the light bulb shines, it has great and far-reaching possibilities.
Lucky for us, imagination is a renewable resource.
Sony Rao is a Trinity junior. Her column runs every other Thursday.
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