1k Reflection :P

Last Tuesday, June 16, 2014, was our second meeting in Technopreneurship. Remember the last time I said I’m never going to be late again? Well, well, I still am late and there I was in front singing to my heart’s content lol. Anyway after the opening remarks of the class we began a series of activities. One of it was called “9 dots”. Surprisingly, that activity actually left a huge impact or rather an impression to me.

9 dots, an activity to test, maybe, your analytical thinking or simply on how you think through things. Simple yet complicated, yes, but it was us or rather how our minds think that made things a bit more complicated. The idea of this activity is simple: connect all 3 x 3 dots with just four strokes without lifting your pen. In simpler terms, connect all the dots continuously in four stokes of a pen.  It sounds simple alright and if you ask me yes I found this activity surprisingly easy because guess what? I somehow manage to grasp or get a hold of a bit of my memory somewhere where I was doing something similar. I don’t quite remember when and how, it may be an activity from when I was still in high school or something like an article from a science magazine (It was one of my hobby reading those before) or it may just be a picture posted in Facebook that I happen to stumble upon, but as what my memory served you need to draw the line excessively (go beyond the box where the dots would connect). Anyway the activity did go on for about 20 minutes or so and I actually got a bit high and mighty (at the same time bored) since I already know the answer to the puzzle and our facilitator said we can use the whole sheet paper to solve the problem and it only took at least ¼ of the paper size. I sat there staring at my classmates puzzled faces, no offense, and wondered if I would be like that too if I had not known the answer. Maybe but then again maybe not because I am the type of person who loves solving trivial questions and tricky puzzles. I even dreamed or aspired to become a DETECTIVE somewhere in the phase of my life but nah I scrap that idea and here I am now taking up Bachelor of Science in Information Technology and writing a 1000 word reflection. Did I regret anything? Nope but to be really perfectly honest I really TOTALLY hate writing these kind of things. Back in high school there were times when I skipped answering the essay parts in tests even though I know the answer because I thought it was kind of a hassle but later I realized I’m doing the teacher a favor since they don’t have to read and check anything anymore so I decided to write a very long and complicated one after that. Okay back to the puzzle part. I don’t know why but these kinds of things really interest me and it really forces my mind to think of a solution, well except for Math. I am not good with numbers to be perfectly honest and I got my first bloody grade in the subject College Algebra. Programming was a bit (1-5%) easier since, more or less, ninety nine percent of the codes were made up of English words and that alone made it a bit easier for me (You just need comprehension!). Well for someone with an average brain like me I somehow manage to pass lol it was a miracle… not!

So as the clock tick and tock everyone seemed really focus on solving the puzzle. I can’t blame them because it’s actually pretty tricky since there is no absolute instruction except for what mentioned above and I gotta hand it down to them for being very practical, or should I say clever, on using curved lines just to connect the dots. It was still wrong though because it defeats the purpose of the activity which is to think outside the box.

The keywords here are “outside the box”. At first it was just a simple activity that I thought just tests your analytical thinking and nothing more but that was not the case. There is more to it than meets the eye. Remember how I stated that the keywords were “outside the box”? I wasn’t kidding. We need to think outside the box. All those who attempted and tried connecting the dots and failed were like a prisoner. Their mind was imprisoned in a jail that never existed. They were not restricted yet they failed to see or think what’s beyond and focused more on connecting it inside that clouded the path to solving the problem. I keep saying “they”, “their”, etc. but there would also be a 50% chance that it would have been the same for me if I had not known the solution before the activity has started. The idea of thinking outside the box is quite simple, to look past or beyond what we usually see. The world would not be what it is today if it weren’t for the people who actually thought of new possibilities and ideas beyond every impossibility that were forced and ingested in our minds. We just need to think wider, higher, and break through the barrier that hinders us from thinking of making an impossible to reality. It was impossible to fly until airplanes and helicopters were made. It was impossible for a metal to float on water until ships and submarines were invented. We just need to open our eyes to new possibilities. Imagine, think, and fantasize creative ideas with a purpose in mind. With all of these realizations, it will still come down to one very simple thought which to INNOVATE. Create something new, create something beyond the usual, create a fantasy and turn it to reality.