The writing workshop was very brief, and I
would have enjoyed more. But in a short time Inger got across the idea of
mining one’s own ‘stream of consciousness’, helped me to understand some of my
strengths and weaknesses in my approach to my project, and gave me
some devices for freeing up my writing. Most helpfully she suggested some
resources, several of which I have downloaded from Amazon, and I found her blog,
which is entertaining and helpful. So the workshop has enabled me to
access the field of expertise about being a research student, scholarship and
writing. So far my reading has been both challenging and affirming.
I enjoyed the morning session with Perry,
in part just because he is a really nice, smart man who asks good questions,
but I think this would have been more helpful if I had been more advanced with
some actual drawings. I missed the first part of the afternoon session,
but what I gathered and took away was a very neat, structured progressive way
to develop conceptual ideas for a design and express those to clients.
His feedback on the details of communicating and linking ideas in presentation
to make them comprehensible to clients was good. He talked a bit about
his approach to research within his practice and his work with communities,
both of which were interesting. In short, the value for me was
seeing some of the “inner workings” of expert practice.
The Masters crit/discussion with Perry Lethlean was a fantastic group session where all levels of masters students casually presented and discussed their projects with both Perry and the other students. Feedback given from Perry Lethlean was very insightful and provided an outside perspective into various projects. For myself I was given ideas outside of what I had been considering which has really opened my eyes to look at my project from different angles and scales. I also realized how much my project had in common with others and that the brain blank I seem to get at times was universal among everyone! The casual atmosphere really helped me to unlock ideas and concepts that have paralyzed me in the past and almost embrace the confusion and potential within my project. Was great to have the feedback outside of a formal workshop as ideas were able to be bounced around in a much more fluid way. I would be very interested in more of this type of session.
The
Masters Class was a fabulous way for me to unlock the creative and
visually succinct side of my brain. I was reminded during the group
exercises how vastly people's visions can vary but how a clear and
simple description can unify these varied approaches. I really
appreciated the chance to step outside of my research project and work
with different levels of students and practitioners to learn a way to
convey the project message a vision.
Writing
can be such a difficult task, especially if I get pedantic about ideas
or phrasing. The writing workshop did an amazing job and simplifying
the approach to such a serious task as writing my masters and provided
a few very helpful tools to getting rid of the writers block and
discover ideas lurking in the brain which struggle to come out on
paper. I most definitely will be using these when I find nothing coming
out of the brain! Her perspective on academic writing was refreshing
and made me realize all issues are normal, common and that there are
ways out. Short but very helpful session. Appreciated this type of
workshop as actually practical.
