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. …

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. …

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 created this project. Horror stories from my IT days came to mind when I read the prompt “misdirection.”

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? …

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. …

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…