Posted on by dmcintosh
When we were tasked with drawing our perception of the student experience, we were instructed to be as objective as possible. “The student experience, not your student experience.”
Much like the marshmallow challenge, this task naturally revealed deeper truths than it’s initial instruction implied. Off the bat, I considered the appeal for objectivity. How could I not infuse my own experience into the general student experience? Could anyone? As students we have individual viewpoints but some things remain the same.
– Time management and compartmentalization are hammered into students as Success Techniques™ so it’s no surprise to see it represented in most works (cc: clocks, hourglasses, boxes with different patterns)
– Alternative paths seemed to be another running theme in our drawings, getting away from the four year in-and-out narrative that defines most university experiences
It was interesting to see that, even with the innocuous instruction, many similar conceptions of the overall student experience still maintained.
I thought of these both when reading Curating as research by Raul Gschrey. Like Gschrey’s findings of the parallels between academic work and curation, our associative drawings revealed similarities between our perspectives. It’s also notable that the piece reminds that there is not one route to the finish line as individual exhibits can contradict each other, but rather than try and force our way toward one answer we instead pose new possibilities all together.
-Daniel
a research gallery 