Feedback on the Workshops

The writing workshop was very brief, and I would have enjoyed more.  But in a short time Inger got across the idea of mining one’s own ‘stream of consciousness’, helped me to understand some of my  strengths and weaknesses in my approach to my project,  and gave me some devices for freeing up my writing.  Most helpfully she suggested some resources, several of which I have downloaded from Amazon, and I found her blog, which is entertaining and helpful.  So the workshop has enabled me to access the field of expertise about being a research student, scholarship and writing.  So far my reading has been both challenging and affirming.

I enjoyed the morning session with Perry, in part just because he is a really nice, smart man who asks good questions, but I think this would have been more helpful if I had been more advanced with some actual drawings.  I missed the first part of the afternoon session, but what I gathered and took away was a very neat, structured progressive way to develop conceptual ideas for a design and express those to clients.  His feedback on the details of communicating and linking ideas in presentation to make them comprehensible to clients was good.  He talked a bit about his approach to research within his practice and his work with communities,  both of which were interesting.  In short, the value for me was seeing some of the “inner workings” of expert practice.

The Masters crit/discussion with Perry Lethlean was a fantastic group session where all levels of masters students casually presented and discussed their projects with both Perry and the other students. Feedback given from Perry Lethlean was very insightful and provided an outside perspective into various projects. For myself I was given ideas outside of what I had been considering which has really opened my eyes to look at my project from different angles and scales. I also realized how much my project had in common with others and that the brain blank I seem to get at times was universal among everyone! The casual atmosphere really helped me to unlock ideas and concepts that have paralyzed me in the past and almost embrace the confusion and potential within my project. Was great to have the feedback outside of a formal workshop as ideas were able to be bounced around in a much more fluid way. I would be very interested in more of this type of session.

The Masters Class was a fabulous way for me to unlock the creative and visually succinct side of my brain. I was reminded during the group exercises how vastly people's visions can vary but how a clear and simple description can unify these varied approaches. I really appreciated the chance to step outside of my research project and work with different levels of students and practitioners to learn a way to convey the project message a vision.

Writing can be such a difficult task, especially if I get pedantic about ideas or phrasing. The writing workshop did an amazing job and simplifying the approach to such a serious task as writing my masters and provided a few very helpful tools to getting rid of the writers block and discover ideas lurking in the brain which struggle to come out on paper. I most definitely will be using these when I find nothing coming out of the brain! Her perspective on academic writing was refreshing and made me realize all issues are normal, common and that there are ways out. Short but very helpful session. Appreciated this type of workshop as actually practical.