Why it's hard for me to be creative

Paper Title

-- By KhurramDara - 24 Apr 2012

Why it's hard for me to be creative

One of the overarching themes of our course is creativity. In some contexts, being creative helps us solve problems; in others it helps us achieve specific objectives. But creativity is a hard thing for us. Forget about making an impact on the world around us, it’s difficult for us to be creative enough to put a paper together. Most of us dread the thought of an assigned paper with no topic. Our reflection post in Constitutional Law asking us whether originalism is should or should not be used in judicial interpretation gives us no anxiety. That’s because the answers are in the book. There are arguments for it, and against it. And we choose some of these arguments, rephrase them, put “Khurram Dara Reflection Post #2” at the top, and call it a day. The extent of our creativity is how we get it done. Will it be in the 45 minutes before we go out on Thursday night? Or do we do the unthinkable and wake up early Friday morning and crank it out before the 10:40 am deadline. We prefer to not have to be creative. Imagine the sheer frustration and stress that would result if we were tested on creativity. Consider an exam, for example, with no question. Instructions indicating to us that we have three and half hours to write an essay on anything we’d like. As a 1L, there are few things that frighten me more. I remember Eben talking about law journals, saying that we probably wouldn’t care much for the work, but that we want the “fruit salad.” I think the “fruit salad” might be part of the reason we can’t, or rather, have a hard time being creative. Everyone seems to be obsessed with “fruit salad,” at least with respect to education. When you’re a child, for some, it’s about which primary or secondary school you attend. The prestige is important. Once you’re in school, regardless of whether you’re in a private or a public school, “fruit salad” is very important. You want to be involved in a certain number of “extracurricular” activities, for your resume, of course. You want to have an impressive internship. You want to take the most “Advanced Placement” courses, and make the honor roll. It’s all about getting into the best college. So you’ll take a class or get a tutor to help you score however high it is you need to score on the SAT. You’ll read about what colleges look for, but everyone knows it’s about the numbers and the “fruit salad.” How many National Merit Scholarship recipients can the college say they admitted? How many valedictorians and salutatorians are in the freshman class? How many of the newly admitted students scored in the top 90th percentile on the SAT? In our case, as students with aspirations of attending professional school, it was the same thing all over again. We needed to get a certain LSAT score and have a certain GPA, and maybe, if our “fruit salad” was made from the freshest of fruits, it could help us out. It’s so the Columbia Law class profile can indicate how high our median LSAT score is, and so Dean Schizer can talk about how many Fulbright Scholars were in the entering class at his next fundraiser. And then we apply for jobs at big law firms. Who want to boast the number of federal clerks they hired, or how many former Harvard Law Review editors they employ. It’s not that this process is entirely without any utility. It’s just that it requires little, if any creativity. This structure does do one thing very well, however. It makes us all really good, I mean really good, at following directions.

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