The Sky's the limit: Dubai as the laboratory for creativity
Honors seminar with study component, spring 2014
The Reflection
This past spring, I took the trip of a lifetime to Dubai. I climbed to the top of the Burj Khalifa, attended one of the biggest and most lavish art conferences in the world, ate dinner in the home of one of the Middle East’s most talented and forward-thinking artists, and even went on a desert sand dune safari. While the trip was perhaps the most fun portion of this experience, it was the relationships with people inside and outside of the classroom that made the biggest impact.
The Sky’s the Limit: Dubai as the Laboratory for Creativity was an interdisciplinary course taught by two distinguished DAAP professors and comprised of about 15 students from different colleges across the UC community. I had the chance to collaborate with students from DAAP, CEAS, McMicken, and Lindner on a weekly basis. Working with students of different personalities, backgrounds, and academic departments seemed exciting at first… but quickly turned into a frustration.
As a science major, I spend most of my days working solo in labs or studying with peers who, for the most part, think just like I do and hold the same academic and personal values as me. In my Dubai seminar, though, I was really out of my league. Class discussions quickly turned into heated debates on differing viewpoints, and it was difficult to communicate since we all came from different academic communities with different expectations of discourse. I remember at one point being called out in class for being quiet—I had become silent in the face of conflict, and frustrated that I wasn’t able to communicate with my peers.
Somewhere along the line, we worked it all out. We began to recognize how each member of the class communicated their ideas, and tailored our own responses to this discourse; the class had discovered its very own “vibe,” one where we had developed a happy medium of language and ideas. While giving a presentation just two weeks ago, I finally realized the value of this communication synthesis: Believe it or not, we will have to work with other people in the real world… crazy, right? We have to be able to communicate with people who think differently, speak differently, and act differently from ourselves. Not only do we have to do this, but we have to do it well. Communication skills are the basis of any successful relationship—personal or professional.
On top of my newfound interdisciplinary communication skills, this seminar gave me one other gift: creativity. It’s easy to get caught up in my little world of biology, chemistry, and medicine. So easy, in fact, that I forget to use the more “artistic” parts of my brain. This class was an eye-opener in this respect. I had somehow gotten it into my mind that I was not creative. Science isn’t an art! …Or so I thought.
While eating in a noodle shop in the middle of Abu Dhabi, I sat in awe, watching my DAAP classmate sketch some still-life drawings. I made a stupid comment—I could never do that. I’m not creative enough… guess that’s why I’m a science major! My professor looked at me in disbelief. He responded with the greatest piece of knowledge I have heard to date: You being a science major is what makes you creative… you use the same artistic approach to problem-solving that an art major would. You are just focused on different content. It was in that moment that I realized something very important: science is an art form. Creativity doesn’t mean being able to paint or draw a perfect circle, it means being able to think about something in a way that no one else has before. As it turns out, science is based upon this principle.
I can honestly say that taking this class has shaped me a lot as a person and as an academic. After discovering a lot about myself, I got to discover a lot about a culture. I went in with an open mind, and came out with a mind filled with culture.
The Sky’s the Limit: Dubai as the Laboratory for Creativity was an interdisciplinary course taught by two distinguished DAAP professors and comprised of about 15 students from different colleges across the UC community. I had the chance to collaborate with students from DAAP, CEAS, McMicken, and Lindner on a weekly basis. Working with students of different personalities, backgrounds, and academic departments seemed exciting at first… but quickly turned into a frustration.
As a science major, I spend most of my days working solo in labs or studying with peers who, for the most part, think just like I do and hold the same academic and personal values as me. In my Dubai seminar, though, I was really out of my league. Class discussions quickly turned into heated debates on differing viewpoints, and it was difficult to communicate since we all came from different academic communities with different expectations of discourse. I remember at one point being called out in class for being quiet—I had become silent in the face of conflict, and frustrated that I wasn’t able to communicate with my peers.
Somewhere along the line, we worked it all out. We began to recognize how each member of the class communicated their ideas, and tailored our own responses to this discourse; the class had discovered its very own “vibe,” one where we had developed a happy medium of language and ideas. While giving a presentation just two weeks ago, I finally realized the value of this communication synthesis: Believe it or not, we will have to work with other people in the real world… crazy, right? We have to be able to communicate with people who think differently, speak differently, and act differently from ourselves. Not only do we have to do this, but we have to do it well. Communication skills are the basis of any successful relationship—personal or professional.
On top of my newfound interdisciplinary communication skills, this seminar gave me one other gift: creativity. It’s easy to get caught up in my little world of biology, chemistry, and medicine. So easy, in fact, that I forget to use the more “artistic” parts of my brain. This class was an eye-opener in this respect. I had somehow gotten it into my mind that I was not creative. Science isn’t an art! …Or so I thought.
While eating in a noodle shop in the middle of Abu Dhabi, I sat in awe, watching my DAAP classmate sketch some still-life drawings. I made a stupid comment—I could never do that. I’m not creative enough… guess that’s why I’m a science major! My professor looked at me in disbelief. He responded with the greatest piece of knowledge I have heard to date: You being a science major is what makes you creative… you use the same artistic approach to problem-solving that an art major would. You are just focused on different content. It was in that moment that I realized something very important: science is an art form. Creativity doesn’t mean being able to paint or draw a perfect circle, it means being able to think about something in a way that no one else has before. As it turns out, science is based upon this principle.
I can honestly say that taking this class has shaped me a lot as a person and as an academic. After discovering a lot about myself, I got to discover a lot about a culture. I went in with an open mind, and came out with a mind filled with culture.