This is the eleventh post from my NaNoWriMo Life Story Crafting project (find first post here). In the “12 Questions to Help Us Realize Our Potential,” it continues question two: “Call to Adventure” Name an experience or opportunity that made you aware of a new skill or insight? The “transformation” I chose to write about was how I came up with the Well-Being Toolbox.
I entered the auditorium in the circular Lawson Hall building with anticipation.
The name of the General Studies-205 design class was called Innovations for the Contemporary Environment. My brother and several of his friends had taken it. They told me I had to take it. Other dorm acquaintances had spoken highly of it, its instructor Weird Harold, too. But apart from saying the course was fun, they seemed united in keeping the experience spoiler free.
The bell sounded the hour. An energetic young Teacher’s Assistant strode up the stairs and crossed to center stage beside the overhead projector.
“Everybody rise,” he said, with a sweeping rise of his arms.
We stood up.
“Everybody balance a book on your head.”
Some of us chuckled as we rustled a book from our backpacks. Those who hadn’t brought a book borrowed one from a neighbor. But we all managed to comply.
“Now stand on one foot.”
More snickers. But we still played along.
“Now rub your bellies.”
The door at the back of the stage opened and a slight, skinny, bearded man with Woody Allen glasses, a long-sleeved turtleneck and sailor’s cap entered mid-conversation with his female teaching assistant.
“Now hop up and down,” said the TA.
More laughter and murmuring as we hopped.
The bearded man looked out at us, his mouth agape.
“What the hell?”
He looked at the TA center stage. “Who’s this guy?”
The stranger started swiftly toward the steps.
“Get the hell out of my classroom before I call security!”
The stranger ran up the stairs toward the back of the auditorium to leave, but not before mooning us.
“Jesus Christ!” said the man. “Does this happen in all of your classes?”
We laughed.
“I’m serious.” He shook his head. “Well, it looks like you all managed to make it into college and through your freshman year by blindly following instructions. But if you’re going to survive in the real world, you’re going to have to learn to think for yourselves. That’s what I’m here to teach you to do.”
Harold Grosowsky was a 59-year-old native New Yorker who didn’t take academia too seriously. We were to refer to him as Mr. G, and to ourselves not as his class, but as a community. His voice and delivery reminded me of Groucho Marx.
He showed us a transparency of the Leaning Tower of Pisa. The tower itself was a monument to poor design, but its location was an acronym for good design thinking.
OFPISA stood for: Objective, Factors, Problem, Ideation, Solution, Acceptability.
Objective: Broadly speaking, what I’m trying to accomplish.
Writing a one-act play in creative writing class.
Factors: An exhaustive laundry list of everything and everyone that might influence the project. The more factors I can identify at the outset, the more likely I am to achieve an acceptable solution later on.
The one-act play must be at least 20 minutes but no more than 30 minutes, it must use a single set, it must have at least three but no more than five actors, the manuscript is due in a week, other classes and course work will place competing demands on time, it’s distracting to my roommate if I use my typewriter between the hours of 11:30 p.m. and 8:30 a.m. What kind of story might the teacher enjoy. What kind of story might the students enjoy. My experience watching sitcoms on TV. Short stories that I’ve written over the years and might be able to adapt, etc.
Problem: Identify a key challenge that I must face to meet my objective.
Come up with an engaging storyline to drive twenty-to-thirty minutes of conflict.
Ideation: Brainstorm a variety of solutions through free association and turn off the inner censor. A wild idea can be tamed, but a tame idea cannot be made exciting. One method would be to pick up a book or magazine at random, close my eyes, and put my finger down on a phrase. I might reach over and pick up my Norton Anthology of English Literature and randomly stumble across…
sacred river ran
A very good salesman claims that he has found the fountain of youth and seeks to get rich off true believers.
we live in a sieve and a crockery jar
A couple yachting around the world on their honeymoon ignore all cautions from their skipper that their yacht is taking on water or the dangers that await at various ports of call.
the Torrible Zone
Some teenage friends sneak out of their houses on Halloween night to meet in the graveyard behind a dilapidated church awaiting demolition. Their goal: the two popular kids want to scare the unpopular nerd into leaving before sunrise.
Solution: The Sacred River would give me a chance to comment on faith. We Live in a Sieve offers the opportunity to explore the vulnerabilities that not even wealth and privilege can insulate us from. The Torrible Zone might show how high school bullying might backfire.
Acceptability: Which solution does the best job of satisfying the factors and achieving the objective?
I don’t have a single set in mind for The Sacred River. We Live in a Sieve could take place on the back of a yacht. The Torrible Zone would use a graveyard set. Of the two, The Torrible Zone might be more relatable to recent high school graduates. The three main actors in the graveyard may be augmented by two additional actors to play out the gruesome stories shared.
I loved the OFPISA process and was good at it. If I had been exposed to any independently wealthy designers, I might well have dropped my Journalism/Advertising path and joined the design school. But once I completed the course and, as one of the initiated, was free to discuss the community with other veterans, I uncovered a paradox.
Everything that had seemed so spontaneous had been painstakingly rehearsed. Every off hand joke had been repeated. I’m not sure for how long, but there were graduate students who had witnessed exactly the same show that I had.
While this didn’t change my opinion of the class, I still found it the most memorable course I had taken so far, it changed my opinion about the man who had invented it.
Why had Harold Grosowsky, who had taught me the nuts and bolts of innovation, chosen to stop innovating years ago to coast through life as a performer in a long-running show he had created? While it might have been entertaining, even transformative for the students, wasn’t he merely marking time with another day at the office?
While OFPISA may have been the most useful thing I learned in college, another course was far more impactful. It would set the stage for the next eighteen years of my life and lead to my withdrawal from antidepressants.
