I’m passionate about books but often read them half-way. But I finished this book this week because my EL department was scheduled to organise an Escape Room activity for our students. Suddenly, I got fired up and completed reading it.

Tbh, I think of myself as a creative person. So I don’t know what else I can do to accentuate my creativity #humblebrag. But ofc I’m lacking in various ways, which “Creative Confidence” has helped surface.

I think the most impressionable point is to use drawing as a way to express creativity. It’s something I know I suck at but am just not concerned about to get down at it - not even when primary school children laughed uncontrollably at my heartbreakingly childish drawings. But maybe, just maybe I should resolve to learn drawing by using lines and shapes. For one, maybe I can evolve as a presenter by calling upon the audience to activate “the theatre of their mind” and spinning circles in the air to illustrate a point. Honestly, I’m concerned about how dementia is afflicting many older Singaporeans nowadays. Drawing is a sure way to build and consolidate new neural networks in my brain.

Another idea I like is to make a prototype video. Yesterday, I came across this website (http://kapwing.com/) that can convert the text you generate on ChatGPT to a video. This is a sign from the Universe that I should go make a video as part of my portfolio.

Aside from these two takeaways, the phrase “reverse mentor”leapt off the page and into my consciousness. Since the phrase I took away from the last book I read was “community leader”, I thought it was a very nice and natural progression of identity: community leader -> thought leader -> reverse mentor. Not sure if I want to be the gregarious social butterfly who is friends with everyone at work but the idea of telling my superiors what they should do oddly appeals to me. It gives me a reason to build on my arsenal of unorthodox and refreshing perspectives.

As a bonus, I found another phrase that explains what I find lacking in my organisation of my school’s Spelling Bee: creating infectious action. I believe some teens did learn emotive words but that’s about it.