A Post With Class

To enhance this post's class, be sure to hit play on one of the Brubeck clips just up and to your right --------->

Today marks two months of me being here in Orlando. Two months of pure awesome. A few unexpected bumps in the road, sure, but I am having the time of my life, learning a lot, and I'm so glad I made the decision to come out here on the program. A few updates since I talked to you last:

I've had two meetings of my class now. It's called Creativity & Innovation: Gaining the Edge. I'm not sure that I would call it a really "academic" class, I don't know where it would fit into my curriculum, though parts of it remind me a lot of my Philosophy of Design class that I took last quarter, ME 234. That's not to say the class won't be challenging though.

We meet once each week for four hours (it's death---I've never sat in class for more than two hours before), with two short breaks. We have writing assignments, a midterm, a research project, a group presentation, and almost daily journal entries that make up our final grade at the end of the course.

The classroom itself is set up with innovation in mind: we all sit around hexagonal tables, and there is an obligatory whiteboard on the main wall flanked by two enormous monitors hooked up to the teacher's computer. One wall is covered in photos showcasing the many attractions we have at all four theme parks. And there is not a single fluorescent light fixture in the room. This setup really helps our unconventional class, we utilize the board and monitors about half the time, and spend the rest of the time in discussion with our groups at each table. This week we had tubs of Play-Doh in the middle of our table; our teacher says that she provides it because many of us learn better when our hands are busy. I don't know that I fall into that category, though when her lecture got boring it gave me something interesting to do. Last week we had a Barrel of Monkeys. That was a little more distracting.

Today we talked about the nature of innovation. To practice the process of innovation, we picked a topic and discussed it at length, how we could better understand the problem, how we could imagine solutions through many different perspectives, how we can apply our findings to action, etc. I mentioned to my table that I wasn't very impressed with Disney's Environmentality campaign.I felt that yes, Disney was making a small effort to be environmentally responsible, especially in sight of the guests. But being such a huge company with so many resources at their disposal (bad word choice?), shouldn't Disney be playing a bigger part? Even things as small as providing recycling bins for our Tell-A-Cast schedules or guests' park maps. Not too difficult or expensive. My whole table agreed and we had a lot to talk about. I'll be developing my ideas more and more in that journal that I'm supposed to be writing in.

In other news, I'm finally getting away from Disney for a day this week. I'll be visiting Universal with a friend on Friday, we're crossing our fingers for soft openings at Wizarding World of Harry Potter! I've been avoiding reading too much up on the attractions there, I want to experience everything with all the "magic" intact first.

I was also selected by one of my managers to help represent the College Program with four other cast members from all over WDW at the 2010 National Association of Colleges and Employers Conference, held here in Orlando the first week of June. I'm very honored, but I have no idea what I'll be doing there. I'm told that I already know everything I will need to know. Yikes.