This typically healthy process, nevertheless, can also involve efforts to avoid normal adult relationships and responsibilities. Whenever we are new to something, we make a fateful decision that puts us on one of two paths. We can choose to follow the path of least resistance, to reduce problems to their simplest and most obvious solutions. By following this path, we become experienced non-experts. The other path is expertise, which is the topic of our class.
Expertise has several components.
We will also learn about how experts work together. The focus of our class, however, is the creative element of expertise. We will read Howard Gardner's book Creating Minds to learn a framework for studying creativity. Then we will read Jon Krakauer's Into Thin Air , which discusses something that Gardner may have left out of his book, the role of risk-taking in creativity. We will have a series of short writing assignments in response to the reading we do and one major writing project.