A lack of creativity

Spending several hours interacting with a developing mind like Lincoln’s was a lesson in creativity unlike any I have experienced in a long time. I could pose any open-ended question in the world to Lincoln and he would have a ready response. In the near three semesters that I’ve spent at Princeton, rarely have I met with as lively an imagination as that of this 9-year-old. And I don’t believe that the University itself is at fault for this dearth of creativity; I think it is a more widespread, systemic problem plaguing education in the modern world. Society’s emphasis on grade point averages and standardized test scores (I’m not just talking SATs, but MCATs, LSATs, GREs and more) drives students to neglect their creative sides in favor of a more rote approach.

When it comes to unique thinking and creativity, it really is a matter of “use it or lose it.” Many students — and I count myself as one of their number — have all but lost the ability to express themselves creatively. How often do you feel like it’s just a little bit harder than it once was for you to come up with a novel thesis for a paper, or an idea for a drawing for an art class, or even an original theme for a party? Because our educational system simply hasn’t been demanding the use of our creative faculty, it lays to waste in the corner of our minds, edged out by prescriptive problem sets and exhaustive exam preparation.

“So what?” you might ask yourself. You’ve gotten this far without much help from your creativity, so who’s to say that it’s really a useful skill at all? And as far as academics are concerned, you’re correct. A trivial amount of creativity is required to succeed in high school and even collegiate academics, but the same is not true for most of the professions to which we aspire. Inspired thinking is crucial to success in law, medicine, business, politics, computing, finance — the list goes on and on. And it is precisely this type of thinking that I feel we are negletcing.

Princeton faculty, administration and, more importantly, students cannot allow creativity to lie fallow any longer. A real emphasis needs to be placed on extracurricular learning, which is, in my opinion, the best way to bolster creative thinking. We need to spend less time reading from textbooks and more time reading things that genuinely interest us, if “Thomas’ Calculus” just isn’t getting it done for us. We need to write more of what lies in our hearts and less of what is recycled from the words of others. The administration boasts of a robust and efficacious Honor Code while effectively sanctioning the plagiarism of academic texts. Just because you regurgitate another’s ideas and then slap a footnote at the bottom of the page doesn’t mean that it’s original. We should write what speaks to us as students, and I guarantee you that not only will we begin to get our creative streaks back, but we’ll also have a lot more fun doing it.

I take my hat off to all of the students on campus who take time to express themselves through mediums of their own choice. The athletes, the musicians, the writers, the dancers. Activists and painters, scholars and singers. All of these people and more pump life into a campus which would be all but dead without their passion. They are not afraid to assume the burden of trying at something they love, even though it might place them under increased pressure. These students are leading the charge which will bring creativity back into our everyday lives. I urge anyone with an interest to not let anything get in the way of that pursuit, lest you lose it entirely and be left with nothing. Empty, without passion or preference.

When you find yourselves on the other side of FitzRandolph Gate with a square-topped cap and a rolled-up diploma in your hand, it’s not going to be the content of what you learned at Princeton which will really benefit you on the long road ahead; it will be the relationships you formed and, most importantly, the way in which you think that act as your guardians on the challenging road of life. And if the way that you think has been compromised by a flawed educational model that Princeton perpetuates, then post-collegiate success becomes a great deal more arduous to achieve. So write a song, do some reading just for fun, or even just spend a little longer talking to your friends. You’d be surprised where your mind might take you.

Nathan Mathabane is a sophomore from Portland, Ore. He can be reached at nmathaba@princeton.edu.