More to the point you need overcome the way in which you were taught. "Stop drawing in your book." "Stop talking." "Listen to this..." "The correct way to..." "You should always..." These are common phrases teachers use daily to keep order and maintain student focus. While I'm not saying classrooms should be chaotic and every teacher is a curmudgeon, I do think some effort should be focused on developing creativity.
When I run brainstorming sessions with my design classes, I am always amazed at how afraid students are to contribute ideas. Brainstorming, when properly done, accepts any idea, no matter how offbeat or crazy. Later ideas are vetted to weed out those that are less likely to produce the desired results. What's interesting is that many of the greatest ideas come from the offbeat or crazy column. For example I was running a brainstorming session where we were to develop a television commercial for a compact car. The target market was women 18 - 24 buying their first car. When polled 85% of this group claimed they wanted reliability above all other features. The most common response to "Why do you want to buy a new car?" was some variation of "reliable transportation to and from work." Some other key features mentioned were power, safety, look, style, and keyless entry.
So the session was off to a bad start, we had ideas ranging from the carpool ad to the coffee run. Standard stuff that would impress exactly no one. So I asked for ideas that the group would NEVER put in this car ad. I got several puzzled looks and questions but I stuck to it and things started rolling. Then I got "beavers" "aliens" "death" "garage sale" "toilets" "egg salad" and then when the initial spurt was over I expanded on each one. For beavers we began adding other animals that weren't good for car commercials. We ended up with a bunch of animals listed and we went on like that for a few minutes. At the end the board was covered with ideas.
When it came time to narrow them down I asked for each group member to give me their worst combination of three listed ideas on the board. Then we voted on the worst of those and the winner was "Dead Zombie Cows."
The Commercial
Close-up of a woman wearing a black cocktail dress walking on a cobblestone street. The cobblestones are shiny from a recent rain and her black high heels provide the only sound as they click nervously along the road. Alternate wide overhead shots showing how alone she is and close-ups of her shoes striking the stones with the night sky as the only backdrop. Then a quick cut to an extreme close up of black fur and a grunting, groaning sound fills the air. The woman stops, looks in every direction, looks down at her small handbag and starts to dig out her keys. She starts walking again. Cut to a close-up of cow snout and vapor escaping a wide nostril... more grunting. The click of heels on stone increases and we see the woman turn toward a dimly lit parking lot. Cut back to a tight shot: the heard of dead zombie cows! Back to her, you see over her shoulder the shiny black coupe. Her hand finally emerges from her bag with the keys. The cows are close now. She is almost to the car now and hits the remote. Close-up door locks unlocking. Close-up the turn signals and headlights blink once. Close-up cow face, eyes blink and look confused. Girl gets in the car and puts her key in the ignition. The engine starts and she shifts into reverse. She backs up almost to the herd of deadly bovine zombies. Then she shifts and floors it. The cows look at the receding taillights and then at one another. They shrug and walk off. The tagline is spoken and displayed: The new (insert car make), and (insert model)... always reliable.
So, when you need to be creative try to be the opposite of a good little boy or girl and who knows what you'll come up with.
