My quest to explore creativity

In one of my previous posts where I discussed why marketing was not the right fit for me at UK, I explained that the core reason for it was because the way the marketing program is set up at my school, it does not do too much to foster much sense of creativity and freedom. Those two things are extremely important to who I am, and I believe college should be a way to expressive who I am while learning new things.

There's a lot ahead of me for me to be able to explore myself in all the creative capacity that I have. But I want to be doing so much more. That's when I started looking through all of my options.

I think the last time I actually used my school's academic exploration tool was when I was a sophomore in high school. And even though it doesn't feel like it, that was an extremely long time ago. Sure, I would check out the major/minor list at Kentucky to see if the things that I wanted to study were offered. But I never took the time to actually type in what I wanted to be, what I was looking for, or the things I wanted to accomplish by the time I walk across the stage at Rupp Arena in 2.5 years to get my bachelor's degree. There are skills I want to build, new things I want to try, and "what if"s and "why not"s that I want to answer.

After extensive research into my honors program requirements (which I for some reason was a little bit clueless on), I realized something huge. I knew all of my requirements, but I had no idea what counted as fulfillments of those. I was able to take 21 hours of classes, experientials, and capstones out of my handy excel spreadsheet that I crafted to keep me on track with my scheduling until spring semester 2021. This meant a lot of freedom was now at my hands. I could ligthen the semester loads starting next fall. I could not have to take a single summer course. These all sounded extremely nice, but I feel like all the free time would just go to waste, knowing me and how lazy and procrastinator-like I get when I have nothing pressing to do. So with that, and with the help of the AET, I realized, "hey, I can take a second minor!"

ISC majors are required to either double major or take up a minor outside of the College of Communication and Information (CI). Coming from a business major, minoring in business seemed like a very smart and practical decision that would come in handy throughout my future job and internship search. And I still really believe that, and will continue to work on my minor in business to be able to graduate with that as a completed minor. But with 21 new free hours, I can take another. And that's what I'm doing.

With a huge push from my inner-self to pursue a creative path, I focused on fine arts and humanities minors. I heavily considered photography, because it is a skill that I really want to build for my journalist craft. But photography and photojournalism are very different, a the former is more about pictures as fine art, and I thought that would lead me in a direction that was not meant for me. Then I looked to digital media and design, because graphic design made a whole lot of sense with ISC. But DMD is, again, more focused on a fine art than the advertising route I would want to take. Plus, I am already planning on taking advertising and creative execution studios within my ISC major. So then my search landed on creative writing.

An extension of the English major and minor, creative writing is an 18-hour sequence of English courses focused on the fostering of writing as a creative outlet. Considered humanities as opposed to the former fine arts minors I had considered, this minor requires far less hours spent in the studios and labs during the semester, and captures my interests far more. Words are my strength. When I was younger, I loved writing short stories, songs, poetry, and everything else that I can study in this minor. In my English classes in elementary, middle, and high school, I was commended for my talent in writing poetry and other creative pieces for assignments. To top that off, my brother is an English major with a creative writing focus, so I guess you could say it kind of runs in the family.

I might drop it if it becomes "too much," but I am excited to officially try my hand at one of my old loves in an educational setting. Plus, these courses will strengthen my soft skills of communication, style, aesthetic, and appreciation of the arts. My first creative writing workshop is set to be scheduled in the upcoming Fall 2019 semester, and I am very excited. I'll probably include a new section on my website where I will be able to showcase my work in creative writing, a juxtaposition to my current news reporting journalism articles section. Stay tuned for these very exciting projects to come!

As a young adult in college, I think it is extremely important to be able to grow and learn in any discipline I want. And I think that the decision for this second minor will benefit me at the end of the day.