While you can learn a lot from research, making experiences teaches lessons of its own. — It seems impossible, but I’m in the home stretch of working on my thesis, The Wildwood of Thought. I always struggle with walking away from a project and calling it done. No matter how many hours I’ve poured into something, I can usually see something else that I could improve…

In the most recent talk on humor, writing, and art I attended, a few interesting things came up. — In my quest to harness more humor in my writing, I had the pleasure of attending a talk by Michael Rees through my Humor Makes Us Better Storytellers course this semester. Rees is an award-winning artist, a Yale graduate with an impressive teaching career, and many museum exhibitions. I was…

It takes a lot of vulnerability to put your story out there. — The initial choice to tell my personal story was a difficult one. Even though the objective of my thesis project, The Wildwood of Thought is to encourage self-introspection on goals and priorities. But for me, explaining the reasons for the career decisions I made in my life requires touching on…

Being funny actually takes a lot of practice and revision. — Recently, my Humor Makes Us Better Storytellers course was visited by writer and comedian Valerie Nies. Her workshop was a mix of challenging my classmates and me to brainstorm potential content for jokes and humorous stories as well as work on analyzing and revising solid examples of humor. It was…

In experimenting with mixed media, I made a 2D-style comic in 3D. — Recently, I became aware of how much I operate like an ideal office-ready professional and how seldom I act like an artist. While these are all just labels that never encompass an entire person, I wanted to venture out and be a little unorthodox with how I…

If I accumulate enough tips, maybe I’ll actually learn how to crack a joke… — I had the pleasure of attending an almost performative lecture by Nathan Phillips, co-founder of Technology, Humans and Taste, and Joe Schiappa, comedy writer and content creator for Sierra Mist, MTV, IFC, Sony, and Clear Channel. Watching two comedians give a talk was a delight. One thing I loved about…

For the past week, I’ve been focusing on making this novella more digestible for my prospective readers. — Working on an extremely text-heavy thesis project does cause me to have crises of faith at times. But what thesis project doesn’t? Regardless, I approach every story I wrote with the goal of making it interesting and engaging for my reader, but writing a very heavy piece of interactive non-fiction…

Learning more about storytelling through amusement park rides and attraction experiences led to reforging a beautiful collaboration; the L3 team from a few weeks ago. For the rest of the wild ride of this semester, I’m teaming up with Linnette Martinez and Leia Chang to develop an experience we’re tentatively…

The act of writing can be an educational experience of its own. — As I muscle through the first draft of my master’s thesis, I find myself coming back to a lot of the writing lessons I learned as an undergraduate. I was at first afraid that I would struggle to flesh out each ensuing chapter of my thesis after the literature review…