Session 1
“Nothing is so painful to the human mind as a great and sudden change.”
― Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, Frankenstein
The Morning began with my first steps into the Design World, I felt like I was in a cold, unfamiliar environment with an unfamiliar pungent chemical smell. This was my first experience way out of my comfort zone. A new city, a new curriculum, a new college with new people from all over the country, some across the globe. This sudden change made me anxious about what was to follow. Being so engrossed in my thoughts about how I may come off as a person, what would people think about me? I began to panic-a kind of panic I’ve never felt before, I was a socialite last week, now I don’t feel like myself anymore. My head stopped functioning normally, my heart skipping beats and then thumping sporadically. I tried to avoid conversations(I being very unlike me) tried to not interact much and just be at the back of the class being unnoticed. Well in this humdrum head of mine, I made an awful blunder. I had entered the wrong class! Now not only had I made things tougher and more complicated for myself than they already were(in my head of course) but also in my attempt on trying to be unnoticed made me even more noticeable, paradoxically. I quickly picked up my stuff and informed the teacher and went to the right class next door. To my not so pleasant surprise, I had missed some of the important introductions and instructions of the first lecture-(screaming from inside!). I enquired with my peers around and noted down the assignment for the week along with the other important instructions given by our faculty- Mrs.Meenal Sutaria. The brief given to us was “Choose 5 images of yourself at different stages in life and write a response in retrospect”.. My life has been a package of varied experiences that have had many different impacts on me and have shaped me into who I am today…
“One day, in retrospect, the years of struggle will strike you as the most beautiful.”
― Sigmund Freud
This was an image taken during my tenth grade, Here’s me on the right smiling a bit awkwardly as usual, in my school blazer and with the sash of the sub-prefect. I’ve chosen this image as I believe that this was one of the most transformative bittersweet experiences in my life. Here was the first time when I was elected into a leadership role which changed me in many different ways and made me learn a lot of key life lessons in a very short period. I learned lessons of perseverance, team spirit, cooperation with authority, leadership and most importantly leading a balanced life. At that time I was a keen sportsman and was heavily into football and athletics and was running for sports prefect. Things took a turn and suddenly I was responsible for handling an entire house which was something which I thought was “biting off more than I can chew”. Nevertheless, I took this as an opportunity to learn and ended up excelling in completing my duties diligently in the year to come. As sweet as this sounds, it was a hard task as my house teacher Mrs.Rai (The one in the center of the picture) was a perfectionist and a fastidious individual who had high expectations and was sometimes controversial. Being under her guidance I learned the importance of clear communication and cooperation. The two being vital in team success. To top things off my mother was at the time a faculty member in my section of the school. This arguably was a clear disadvantage to me because if I ever slipped in my act-be it academically or behaviourally, the teachers would run to her and well there would be fireworks at home during lunch later in the afternoon. Looking back now, i know that this was an experience in which I lost a few friends in the bargain as I became more serious with my work and less carefree and rebellious like I was a year ago , but I also gained a lot of respect for myself and I had learned to balance my sports, academics, and duties. As a very overthinking and a self analytical personality, Many a time I even think to myself about what if things had been different, what if I had just stayed the way I was carefree, rebellious and nonchalant..what if this would have never happened..would I have grown?, was it really worth putting myself under so much pressure of my own to perform till my breaking point?.. some of these answers I still seek to find.
“These walls are funny. First you hate em’ then you get used to em’. After long enough you get so used to em’ you depend on them. That’s ‘institutionalised.
Red, The Shawshank Redemption
This picture was the day that I graduated from St.Mary’s School Pune. I’ve been in that school since 4th grade with the same set of friends till 12th grade. Looking back now I feel extremely nostalgic about my years of schooling and I find it very hard to cope with life-changing at such a fast pace.
“He who climbs upon the highest mountains laughs at all tragedies, real or imaginary.” ―
Friedrich Neitszche
Here is the time when I went for the most adventurous family vacation in my life. These images were taken during the summer vacations of my eighth grade in 2014. This Image according to me, encompasses the first time when I had experienced the cold of the mountains and snow. It was a blissful, tough yet soul-enriching and calming experience. It was a time of disconnection from social media and a re-connection with nature. Truly, Nietzsche’s quote makes a lot more sense to me now that I ponder upon my memories.
“Low self-esteem is like driving through life with your hand-brake on.”
Maxwell Maltz
This image was captured on my tenth birthday party, during my 5th grade. This was a time in my life where I was very overweight and plump for my age and was bullied and teased over it for a long time. Ever since then I have been very conscious of my fitness and self-image.
In retrospect, I believe that this was a tough transitionary period in my life as I had to deal with a lot of people’s negative comments and abuses from my peers.
Nevertheless, I persevered and in the next year through constant toil and sweat, I improved by leaps and bounds and proved it to myself and everybody else by becoming the best athlete of my class in 6th grade.
Session 2
At the beginning of the lecture, we discussed the various communication media that are used in daily lives. I debated about the difference between emails and letters- emails according to me being more formal and less personalized compared to letters as letters engage the reader’s senses of touch, smell and vision. Emails are only engaging the visual senses with limited typography options. I also understood that mediums such as tweets and blogs need to be revamped to be less misused and instead should be used to create simple crisp and effective communication among individuals. I also understood that we all need to make an individual change ourselves to create a larger impact on the world. We need to create platforms to urge us to reflect on ourselves before we put out our personal views in the name of freedom of speech.
After this discussion, we were assigned the brief to “Pick 3 images of ourselves from our family albums and write letters addressed to our past selves.” The reference which was given to us for the task was “Letters to a young poet by Rainer Rilke” The letters written are advisory letters by Rainer Rilke to a young student(Franz Xaver Kappus) from the same college as the author, who asks him advice on whether his poems are good or bad? The author (Rainer) replies in his letter to the young poet to stop looking for approval from the outside world and that nobody could advise or help him and that there is only one thing that the poet should do. He tells the young poet to go into himself and find out the reason that commands him to write and to ask himself if he must do so. Once you do this try to write about what you see, love and loathe and try to avoid forms of writing that are too ordinary. Write about what your daily life offers you, describe with humble sincerity your desires and sorrows and your belief in some kind of beauty.
“So, like a forgotten fire, a childhood can always flare up again within us.”
– Gaston Bachelard
Dear Past Eight Year Old Self, I write to you in retrospect to tell you that you are quirky in your ways and are a unique curious child. Never stop looking at the world through your innocent, carefree eyes and try to enjoy and live whole-heartedly all the small moments like these. For one day you will look back and find that these were the good old memories that you will cherish for a lifetime. Keep smiling just the way you are in this image for a warm smile is the universal language of kindness and it will take you a long way ahead in life.
“Don’t let anyone burst your bubbles”
Dear Ten-year-Old Self, I write to you to urge you to follow what your heart tells you and not to follow what your peers or the noise of the teachers or anybody else. You are who you are. Strive to be the best version of yourself and try not to emulate the ones who are in the limelight around you. For you will find that one day you will forget your true inner self and will become hollow inside. Learn to love yourself the way you are and embrace your flaws without judgement. And remember to take time to enjoy the frivolous things in life such as blowing bubbles like in the image above. As you grow older the world will get colder so have a little fun in the sun and live while you’re young.
Here’s to the crazy ones, the misfits, the rebels, the troublemakers, the round pegs in the square holes… the ones who see things differently — they’re not fond of rules… You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them, but the only thing you can’t do is ignore them because they change things… they push the human race forward, and while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius, because the ones who are crazy enough to think that they can change the world, are the ones who do.
— Steve Jobs, 1997
Dear twelve-year-old past self, you are a funny quirky rebellious kid who is a misunderstood brat. Being mischievous has its fun and charm and is an essential part of growing up. Be the most fun version of yourself but don’t overdo it to hurt anybody for you were once the quiet and shy kid who was made fun of too. Use your influence among your friends to do good and spread happiness instead of hate. Run freely and wild and enjoy and embrace all your mistakes for if you don’t fall you won’t learn.
Session 3
“I cannot make you understand. I cannot make anyone understand what is happening inside me. I cannot even explain it to myself.”
― Franz Kafka, The Metamorphosis
In this morning’s Integrative Seminar lesson, we were introduced to Franz Kafka; a German-speaking Bohemian novelist and short-story writer, widely regarded as one of the major figures of 20th-century literature. His work “Metamorphosis” is our study material for the semester. In his writings, I believe that Kafka uses subliminal metaphors to describe his own life at the time he wrote the book. According to me, Kafka’s language and usage of words are a symbolism to his ethnicity and his state of mind with regards to the troubles he had to face in his daily life.
Kafka was throughout his life Overshadowed by his father’s practical, ambitious and bullying personality. In his book, he takes on the character of Gregor Samsa: a travelling salesman who is one night metamorphosised into a bug. Bug, being the most hated insignificant creature in Jewish mythology is an apt description of the way he felt about himself at that time.
I believe this was a time when he was at a point of severe loneliness and was isolating himself from society. Kafka’s insecure, submissive yet caring personality is showcased in the first chapter where he elaborates on his life’s condition: indebted to his boss, he works as a travelling salesman to provide for his family.
In his writings, I drew the following conclusion about the characteristics of each of his family members: his father is a highly ambitious man and is ashamed of Gregor’s weak and highly intellectual personality. His mother and his sister both are sympathetic, emotional and caring and sensitive personalities and are his only positive support system through the first chapter.
After a discussion about the characteristics of each individual in the first chapter we were assigned the work to write ten metaphors that describe ourself to which I wrote:
- I am a medicine, a brutally honest yet painful individual.
- I am a carpet as sometimes I have been walked over by many people
- I am a blanket as I am a warm person on the inside.
- I am a power bank as I recharge you when you are low and I am always there for you during emergencies
- I am a defibrillator as I am anxious and a sporadic individual and I am a self-critical overthinker
- I am football because I only reach my goals when I am kicked in the ass and have been pushed to work
- I am a mint as I am an innovative individual with fresh ideas
- I am a matchstick as I only work when I have a burning desire and have been rubbed the wrong way
- I am a scale because I am precise and accurate with my work and information
- I am a candle because I guide people through their dark times.
Session 4
“Self-awareness is like an onion. There are multiple layers to it, and the more you peel them back, the more likely you’re going to start crying at an inappropriate time.”
― Mark Manson
In this Integrative Seminar lesson, I understood the difference between Introspection and Retrospection. When we introspect we go into ourselves and understand our behaviour and the reaction that we had to the outside world. When we look back at things in retrospection we look on the outside we look at the stimulus that caused us to behave or react in a certain manner at a given point in time.
We were taught the concept of the layers of introspection and critical thinking in the form of an Iceberg. On top of the Iceberg is the layer of the events that happened in our lives. The middle layer consists of our thoughts and the way we perceive and see the world around us. The lower layers consist of the beliefs that we develop due to our recurrent thoughts and actions. The second last layer consists of our values or our conscious state of mind which is shaped by our thoughts and our values and beliefs about ourself. The last and final layer is the deepest one- our subconscious mind. This is what shapes our social and emotional conduct.
This Iceberg Introspection was like a concept called “the self-awareness onion” I had read before in the book “The Subtle Art of not giving a f***” by the world’s bestselling author Mark Manson.
Our Assignment in this class was to break down one of the metaphors chosen by us in the previous class into the layers.
The Metaphor I’ve chosen: “I am a matchstick as I only work when I have a burning desire and/or have been rubbed the wrong way”
Events:
I was really fat in my 5th grade and was bullied around for my weight and size throughout that year and before. It was at that point I was rubbed the wrong way and fire arose within me. Throughout that summer I played badminton, football, basketball and I took up swimming daily. Next year, I became the best athlete of the class and I was consistent with that title till my 8th grade. I was also awarded the best all-round sportsman for two years consecutively.
The second event was when my marks were reduced in my preliminary examinations in my tenth grade. I was aspiring for a 70% throughout the tenth grade and was awarded a 69.8% the two marks were not given to me because I got a -1 for not underlining something in my biology paper out of 50 marks which then became a -2 out of 100. I was really unhappy and I was filled with wrath. I then turned that pain into power and scored a 96 in science and an overall 95% boards.
Thoughts:
Honestly, my thoughts back then were that I have to fight it out to make my self respectable and valued as a person. I was thinking at that time that I’ve got to prove it to myself and others that I am not just good but I am the best. I needed to be great at something so that people would respect me when they said my name. They would think twice before trying to put me down. I was also pissed off enough to make me persevere beyond a point where I would let everything in my life take a backseat including my health just to prove it that I am the best.
Belief:
My recurring thoughts to win then made me believe that I would only be good enough or respectable enough if I was better than everybody else at what I did. This then made me believe if I wasn’t the best at my work or at my sports I would be devalued as an individual. This is the kind of system that I grew up with.
Values or Conscious Mind:
My conscious mind then put a lot of undue pressure on me to start competing with everything and everyone around me. I was filled with a complex to either beat everyone or start envying those who were better than me at a few things. I overworked and pushed myself way too much in my head to try to be the best at everything and I started hating myself If I wasn’t that good at something. Instead of learning to accept me for who I was I tried to be someone else. Tried to copy those who were better than me and tried to be competitive at all times. I tried so hard and got so far and in the bargain, I became extremely anxious about myself, any kind of failure I thought was a threat to my identity and my personality.
My Subconscious:
Due to these recurrent cycles of working tirelessly and being my harshest critic. I started to develop a competitive entitlement. I set the bar way too high for myself and subconsciously I always thought the worst or the best about myself depending on the situation. In my head, I beat myself up all the time on all my minutest shortcomings and developed a very negative attitude towards my life. My subconscious had developed the attitude that I only deserve affection or love or respect if I’m worth something or that I am good at something.
Session 6 & 7
“There are no facts, only interpretations.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche
Today was the day we submitted our fifth-week essay on the topic of “Who am I”. In this Integrative Seminar Session, we conducted a peer to peer reviews in groups of three. Rahul, Shaman and I were reviewing each of our essays and writing feedback on each of our draft sheets. In this class, I realised the importance of gaining multiple perspectives from others in our work.
This reminds me of the time when I was reading the book called ” The Upside of Irrationality: The Unexpected Benefits of Defying Logic at Work and Home” written by Dan Ariely, an Israeli-American James B. Duke Professor of Psychology and Behavioural Economics at Duke University. In his book, he explains a concept called “The Not Invented Here Bias” which states that “The effort that we put into something does not just change the object. It changes us and the way we evaluate that object. Greater labour leads to greater love. Our overvaluation of the things we make runs so deep that we assume that others share our biased perspective. .”
Naturally, I after working hard on my essay was very happy with my work and was overvaluing its content and believed that it was near perfection.
But to my peers, that was not the case. They gave me constructive criticism and told me that my essay was not very personal and was written more in the style of an article or a thesis project.
They both also commented that my metaphors usage was not very clear and convincing to them as I was defining myself using simple and broad terms with a lack of indication towards my chosen metaphors. They also suggested that I add some expression and feeling into my essay.
This disheartened me at first but then I realised that they were, in fact, right about their feedback. I was too busy typing out my knowledge and understanding of whom I am using methods that I learnt in self-help books that I forgot to indicate my metaphors and did not elaborate on them. Nevertheless, as it was a draft I still have the chance to change my essay before the final submission.
Session 8
“How you climb a mountain is more important than reaching the top.”
― Yvon Chouinard
In this Integrative Seminar Lesson, We were assigned to submit the final draft on our essay of the topic “WHO AM I?” on a 250gsm printed paper in an a5 cutout model.
In this lesson, I received feedback on my essay where Meenal Ma’am mentioned that I was unclear and was beating around the bush about certain aspects of my essay.
She mentioned that I must learn to be clear with the flow of my thought process. A clear thought process will then create a clear outcome in my writing.
I realised that many of the words and paragraphs in my essay were not in coherence with the conclusion and the point I was attempting to reach.
Therefore In this Integrative Seminar, my main take back was to be extremely clear with my thought process and to develop a flow that is understandable to others. Having a clear thought process is an essential prerequisite while attempting any design-related work.
In this Integrative Seminar Lesson, I also learnt that my work defines who I am. The ability of my creative visualisation and acceptance define who I am.
Meenal Ma’am also made us realise that “empathy with yourself is the start to empathising with others” and that “acceptance is the art of recognition, and not a fixed state of mind.” and that the emotions attached don’t become the state of mind the choice you make is the acceptance and understanding which then translates into your state of mind.
Session 9
“But a city is more than a place in space, it is a drama in time.”Patrick Geddes
In this Integrative Seminar class, we were introduced to the second part of our projects. Here we were introduced to the concept of cities. We were to work in a group for the following project. My group comprised of Rhea, Khushfrin, Anirudh and Diva. We were assigned to answer the following questions:
What is the city made up of?
How does one navigate through the city?
Why do we write about cities?
We answered the following:
The city is comprised of :
Architecture
Crowd
Smells
Weather
Food
How one navigates through a city:
By asking the local transportation drivers for directions
By looking at signs and symbols
By looking out for landmarks
By navigating the city by looking at paper maps
By looking at the north star
After the discussion, we were assigned to pick a city and to assign 5-6 words that accurately describe the city.
We choose the city of Singapore and assigned the following words for the city:
Weather
Touristy (tourist attraction places and variety of things to do for all ages)
Rules
Fusion (food, culture)
Technology
Learning Portfolio 