Are you looking for a new method of thinking or a new style of writing exercise? Have you ever wanted to try exploring generative ideas?
This workshop centers on using mini-essays, or microthemes, to get back into the pre-search mindset to effectively research and draft your writing. Learners will go through short sprints of writing reflective mini-essays, so they can practice organizing their observations, questions, and reflections in chunked formats.
Let’s go back to the basics of observing, questioning, and reflecting to center our learning and personal development. Participants will use microthemes to collect their thoughts and ideas and develop (or re-develop!) their voice—activities that can be used and modified for instruction or for one’s own reflective library practice. In the newfangled world of AI that we exist in now, it’s even more imperative to keep a connection to your own thoughts and ideas and understand what they are and how they come to be.
This workshop invites intimacy and vulnerability as it focuses on fundamentals, all while using analog tools (aka pen and paper) to intentionally slow down our thought process for a generative session.
Participants will come away with:
- A process to follow the progression of their thoughts, their lines of questioning, and their own reflection being shown back to them, all of which they can then replicate or modify for work or for personal use
- A great source of generated materials of their own thought processes—an emphasis that supports “process over product”
- A writing (instruction) activity that librarians may want to use in the classroom or in meetings, or for those seeking more qualitative feedback for various developments, like personal growth or overseeing a long-term project
About our presenter: Sam Mandani (she/her/any) is the Online Instruction Librarian at New York University. Her work focuses on a contemplative approach to instruction, learning, technology, vocation, and play. For fun, she fiddles with mechanical keyboards, fangirling all sorts of stuff, and taking after-work naps whenever possible.