From Flaticon, one of many resources available to you online.
Previously: Telling your story, or at least a part of it.
The short version of this post: Use your creativity and insight to build a personal SWOT analysis for the rest of the year. Follow any of the hundreds of guides out there:
The long version of this post will show you how to do this well.
To create the best version of you, you must have a blueprint. You’ve done a considerable amount of this work already, but there is always more to do. You need to think divergently.
One way to do this is to expand your “network of possible wanderings,” a term used by Teresa Amabile to define expertise:
Expertise encompasses everything that a person knows and can do in the broad domain of his or her work. Take, for example, a scientist at a pharmaceutical company who is charged with developing a blood-clotting drug for hemophiliacs. Her expertise includes her basic talent for thinking scientifically as well as all the knowledge and technical abilities that she has in the fields of medicine, chemistry, biology, and biochemistry. It doesn’t matter how she acquired this expertise, whether through formal education, practical experience, or interaction with other professionals. Regardless, her expertise constitutes what the Nobel laureate, economist, and psychologist Herb Simon calls her “network of possible wanderings,” the intellectual space that she uses to explore and solve problems. The larger this space, the better.
The emphasis is mine. Everyone has an “intellectual space” that is used to solve problems. It grows over time, but only when you work to expand it. The boundaries of the space are determined by what you know, which you can imagine as a “network” of subjects, understandings, and interests. Amabile’s next paragraph offers examples of this kind of network:
Creative thinking, as noted above, refers to how people approach problems and solutions — their capacity to put existing ideas together in new combinations. The skill itself depends quite a bit on personality as well as on how a person thinks and works. The pharmaceutical scientist, for example, will be more creative if her personality is such that she feels comfortable disagreeing with others — that is, if she naturally tries out solutions that depart from the status quo. Her creativity will be enhanced further if she habitually turns problems upside down and combines knowledge from seemingly disparate fields. For example, she might look to botany to help find solutions to the hemophilia problem, using lessons from the vascular systems of plants to spark insights about bleeding in humans.
Again, the emphasis is mine. You want to be able to change your perspective in that intellectual space as easily as you change it when looking at optical illusions or describing inkblots. That’s why you started there and then looked at yourself more critically to tell a story about what you see.
Read the rest of Amabile’s article online at The Harvard Business Review, if you have a lot of time or a serious interest in how organizations build or stifle creativity. Otherwise, you should continue to read the interstitial instruction that is required — including posts like this one:
Strength in Opportunity: SWOT Analysis
All of that is preamble to your assignment, which is to create a personal, academic SWOT analysis. You need to expand your “network of possible wanderings” while avoiding the threats that crop up throughout any school year. Certainly the next few months will have their share of hazards.
First, you have to learn what this sort of analysis requires. Here is a detailed article:
And here is a two-minute video:
You’re in school, so you need to adjust the language specific to careers and businesses. Use common sense, or ask for help.
Second, you need a template. You can create your own, search online for a model, or use one of the ones prepared for you. Templates drawn from this site have been reorganized and reformatted for ease of use:
Make a copy of any templates you’d like to use. You can also use Canva, if you feel more comfortable with that:
Finally, you want the right language for this analysis. You can use the set of universal skills and traits for this course, or you could turn to this district’s version of those same skills:
This is what your school expects you to look like when you graduate. This is where the terms and categories for your strengths and weaknesses should derive.