Class activities:
In our fourth session we opened in a circle with “two truths and a lie.” I slipped in just in time - and botched the rules by blurting three truths (a double negation tripped me up): I love adrenaline, I don’t like sweets, and I enjoy making asados. We then resumed last class’s exquisite-corpse exercise. My group sketched a tree-headed figure - Groot-like - and the professor composited everyone’s panels into a surprisingly cohesive mural. Next, each student presented a myth and its lesson; I chose the Río de la Plata legend of the luz mala, the eerie floating light. We watched several short videos and discussed a reading on creativity myths and insight as the product of effort plus incubation.
Personal reflection:
The icebreaker misfire was a humorous nudge about clarity: tiny language twists can derail intent. The reading challenged the romantic “mad genius” cliché; creativity isn’t madness or a sudden explosion, but the visible tip of patient, iterative work. The point about stepping away resonated - my best fixes often surface after a walk or task switch. The luz mala felt like a metaphor for uncertainty: unnamed, it breeds fear; investigated, it becomes a navigable signal. Watching our tree-head drawing merge into the mural reminded me that coherence can emerge from partial contributions when constraints and handoffs are respected. I left with a stronger respect for incubation and the need to capture notes before insights fade.
Personal application:
This week I’ll turn those insights into practice. I will attack problems in a creative way, I will start writing all the things that come to my mind related to the problem, and I will take breaks to let ideas incubate. Then, I will review my notes to identify promising directions, I will prototype the most viable ideas, and I will seek feedback to refine them. Success means two recorded insights, one improved generation of "creative" ideas, and faster, clearer decisions in next week’s tasks.