11A: think like a college student

This past week in class we have been focusing a lot on Inquiry questions and what makes a particular question a good inquiry question.  I have learned this semester that an inquiry question is not one that you would find on a multiple choice quiz.  It is a question that actually requires you to think rather than just having a straight forward answer.  These types of questions require you to analyze, evaluate, interpret, and synthesize in order to come up with a college level answer.  In class we came up with some questions and practiced how to answer them.  This practice will definitely help me in my other classes.  I can use these techniques on my tests in quizzes in the future.

I came up with four inquiry questions about this past week’s readings.  All of these questions require college level thinking and analyzing to come up with an answer.

Question 1: How can a nurturing and safe environment be important to creativity?

Question 2: How do difficulties and obstacles help the learning process?

Question 3: How can hiring a hard worker differ from hiring a creative thinker?

Question 4: How can being bored impact creativity in a positive way?

I chose question 4 to answer.  How can being bored impact creativity in a positive way?

Being bored can stimulate your brain in different ways than it would if you were actively thinking.  When you are bored your mind has the time to wonder and think about things that you wouldn't normally think about if you were busy.  Being bored is looked at as being a bad thing, and people do anything they can to occupy or entertain themselves.  They occupy themselves with day dreaming and just having their minds wonder in any direct it can.  When you are busy you don’t have time to do your own thinking and come up with creative ideas.  Even though sometimes people think being bored is bad, it can actually be looked at as a creativity booster.  Being bored can sometimes be a very good thing!  You can come up with some of your best ideas while being bored, just from letting your mind do what it wants to.

This question definitely made me use college level thinking and really put in detail and go into depth for my answer.  I think that practicing answering questions like this will only help me on my next quiz or test.  Now I know what kind of answers are expected in the college classroom and I can use that to  my advantage when studying.