Mind Trips

If you are feeling overwhelmed about your upcoming blog assignment, dont be. These are some tips that you can use to help you score a perfect grade. To do so, I will use a cooking analogy – as I always do. Lets imagine that you have a recipe (assignment) to bake your very own bread creation (blog). You don’t want any mistakes. You want perfection.

1. Read the recipe ALL the way to the end!

A few weeks ago I wanted to create an egyptian pastry that I grew up eating on special occasions. They are little round dounut like food that you dunk in a special light syrup called Loukoumades. In Egypt, you usually find this as street food. So, when I suddenly felt like I wanted to eat these, I quickly went online, found a recipe and started gathering the ingredients and adding them one after the other. Flour check, instant yeast check, sugar check, salt check, yogurt check. Of course, I had not read the whole recipe, and realised after I was done mixing everything together that I was supposed to add the yogurt at room temperature (it was witten in the instructions which i did not seem to find improtant!). I had added it immediately from the fridge. When i left it to proof it did not have the bubbles that is should have had. So I added some warm water. which made it runny. Long story short. It was a disaster. I learnt from this experience that I must always read the recipe in full first. To make sure that I understand all requirements. I even read other similar recipes to make sure that the quantities make sense.

The same goes for your blog assignment, and any assignment for that matter. Read the assignment itself. Read the Rubric. Read the characterisitcs of each blog. Read ALL the required reading before starting to write your blog. It will save you a heart ache at the end!

Proofing is important

In bread making or any baking, proofing is an important part of the process. Proofing is when you leave the dough to rest for a while and do its thing. My advice to you is to read the required reading ahead of time. do not set 1 hour to read and write the blog. It will be no good. Read a few days before you will write it. This will give you time to think about it and come up with a number thoughtful angles that you could approach the issue. It takes time to synthesise the material.

Its Your Creation! Take charge.

Although the first two were about ready made recipes. Remember that you have to be original. All great chefs, start by understanding the basics of a recipe and then they add their own twist and make it their own. With blog posts its the same. You read the assignment, you go through the required readings, and you give yourself time to think and synthesize then you set out and plan what you will write, and how you will write it. Its a good practice to develop a mindmap for example. You may have many different ideas identify them on the mindmap, then choose one aspect and that will be your angle. Make connections betweent he different aspects so that your blog is coherent and not mishmashy (is that even a word?!)

Finally I hope you found this helpful. If you have other suggestions for other studetns please leave them in the comments below.

Good Luck

Hi! You have been asked to write a blog post for your class. One of the items on the rubric is “engaging content”? Well, if you want people to read your blog then you need to make sure that your blog is fun! It needs to make people want to read it.

I would recommend that you research creative writing or engaging writing. One of the really good courses I found is on Coursera and it is called “Viral Marketing and How to Craft Contagious content” by professor Jonah Berger of the University of Pennsilvania. The course is made up of 4 modules; how to make ideas stick, how social influence shapes behaviour, the power of word of mouth, and social networks. You can get through it in a weekend probably. And for your information, you can go through coursera coures for free as long as you do not do any of the quizzes etc.

I loved this course because it gave quick applicable tips about how create engaging content. It did this using what he calls the SUCCES acronym :

Simple: stick to one piece of information and use analogy to make it memorable and imaginable. Make people want to seek more information.

Unexpected: Violate expectations. Create a curiousity gap so that people are surprised. Remember that repetion can dull the surprise.

Concrete: Show dont tell. Make your idea visible. Think of climate change vs global warming. Which one is more visual to you?

Credible: Remember that numbers are not memorable on their own. You need to give context to numbers. E.g. california has a population of 33 million – does not tell you much. But california’s population is more than the population of New mexico, oregon, (list additional 10 states) combined gives it more credibility.

Emotional Stories: Ask why 3 times to get to the real reason behind something and use a story that tugs at our hearts to leave the audience with a feeling.

One of the examples he gave was an apple mac book air ad. This exemplifies many of those tips. Number one it focused one simple piece of information about the macbook air, its size. It did not go into too many details about internal memory or capcity or screen or any of this. There was one message that it is light and thin. It was also unexpected to find a laptop coming out of that envelope – especially 12 years ago when laptops were much bigger than they are now. Instead of saying “this laptop is only 0.5 inches thick” they showed you the laptop coming out of the envelop which gave it a context and credibility. I can go on and on about how amazing this ad is – including this wonderful song “new soul”. But I will let you watch it for yourself.

Good luck and i look forward to reading your blogs soon.

References: Images from Pixabay ;