Spring Break gave me time to think about everything in college so far (a lot of time). I got myself to ask questions of what I want to see from myself in a year, and I came to this answer:
I want to make a difference for the better in my environment.
Let this be broken down. I need to carry myself such that I am 100% open to suggestion and change to further enhance the Stony Brook experience for everyone involved. This doesn’t involve just making sure people know about services offered here, but to make those services enticing and useful to learn. As a (contrived) example, take printing at Stony Brook. In the basic form, one needs install software, then print normally. This isn’t very new, however. What is new is being able to print from just making an email. The spark of attraction: This can be done from a swipe on a phone. As I see it, removing the bulky hardware here has made an old idea new.
These kinds of ideas that haven’t been tested before are the ones that need to be spoken, since simply keeping something operational will not magically summon ideas. Thought needs to go into that. Granted, these thoughts can be as simple as ‘I wish I could do X’. A concrete example: (a) wanting to go to a Student DoIT Advisory Board meeting, and (b) offering an idea like ‘there should be more accessible power outlets so people can charge on the go’. Even though I had to modify my schedule and move a shadow hour around, I believe that was worth doing, since offering (hopefully) new ideas up the chain can only help.
That was just my Monday.
Tuesday (3/24) was a day I was excited for since the 3rd week of classes—it’s not every day you get to interview the CIO of your school, Cole Camplese. The short version: From that interview, I learned the how of future-sight. Cole is a visionary, and good at it. The idea isn’t just to make an infrastructure work to specifications, but to envision what people want before they even know what that is. This extends into most problem domains, and that to me is the foundation of the ability to critically think on a new level.
