What would a good student do? Right here. Right now.

I’VE BEEN WORKING ON THIS ENTRY FOR A WHILE. I often bring it up in Lead Graffiti’s workshops, and it would be great if students would read it before they came to the studio and bring it up a couple of times.

When I was teaching creative thinking in the Visual Communications Group at the University of Delaware, I would often raise the question “What would a good student do? Right here? Right now?” The idea was to turn a simple opportunity into a miracle.

SO, IF YOU HAPPEN TO BE A STUDENT, consider this—most educational programs do a reasonable job of exposing their students to educational opportunities and options. The question now becomes, "What does the student do with that opportunity?" Some teachers probably give better assignments than others. Some schools have more or better field trips & speakers. And they all have libraries. Everyone has access to almost every website, blog, tweet and photograph on the planet. So, now the question becomes, "Why aren't all students good?" Now everyone shouldn’t ask this as a question, but it could be helpful right here, right now to understand the concept of “simultaneous contrast.”

Right here. Right now.

THINK ABOUT THE OTHER TENS OF THOUSANDS OF STUDENTS graduating from design schools this year. Imagine the best places in the country to work. Places where you can do the best work and where that work will make you known to people who are influential in your chosen industry. Do an online search for "best design schools" or "best creative writing schools." While I don't necessarily trust those lists, your school probably isn't listed. And I promise you that all of those schools that are have bad students.

Now imagine you are standing at Lead Graffiti with only good students from only good schools. What can you do to keep from being the worst student there? Likely you won't jump to the top in one workshop. But couple this Lead Graffiti experience (which few, if any, of those exceptional students have had) with your next assignment, with your next question, with your next follow-up question, and you can close, and perhaps even cross, that gap.

Some 1500 students over the past 10 years or so have interacted with Lead Graffiti through workshops, tours & shorternships. Sometimes through their classes, professors drag their students through the experience, and at other times it is an opportunity that the students have scheduled and paid for on their own.

Here? At Lead Graffiti? Now? Take a shot.

WE AT LEAD GRAFFITI think that our workshop experiences have value. We’d like for them to have 5 times that value. We give a studio tour. We show some of what we think is our best relevant work and we show work from other letterpress shops we admire. But to find a way to take the experience up a few notches, we need help. And about the only place we can get that help is from the students.

I’m writing this with the notion that you’ll find yourself sitting in a letterpress workshop at Lead Graffiti. This is a different place than you’ve probably ever been. It’s organized in a way you couldn’t possibly understand if you had a week. You are working in a centuries-old technology (or maybe because it is so not a smart phone you’d call it a non-technology) and a process you don’t know, using a measurement system you might barely understand, and you are asked to do a creative project without sketches (we almost never work from sketches). You cannot possibly know what to do. Now what?

Just ask yourself the question, “What would a good student do? Here. Right now.” Think about the ghosts of those good students from those good schools floating around you. “What would those good students do? Here. Right now.”

And then ask yourself that question another 150 times that day.

150 times each day. Small nudge x 150 = large nudge.

I DO NOT BELIEVE THERE ARE NO BAD QUESTIONS. There are a gazillion terrible questions. They are the ones that don’t move you anywhere. “Do you like working with letterpress?” Duh. “What is it about letterpress that is valuable to your creativity?” may get you an answer you can use.

You need to find the time and the energy and the nerve to ask a dozen good questions over the day. Ten of you in class will generate 120 questions. Some will have good answers. A few will have exceptional answers. Ask them so the other students can hear those answers. And when you hear good questions, you can listen to those answers. Ask a question that a good student from a good competing school would ask. One that moves your work forward and not just sideways, and especially not backwards. It needs to be a question that gets the answers to some other issues and sets up even better questions. Sometimes a good student will stand close to make sure they hear the questions. And the answers.

“What would a good student do? Right here. Right now.”

TAKE A LOOK AT OUR ONLINE PORTFOLIO and find a couple of pieces of work that interest you. A good place to look at our work is from our store which compacts groups of projects together.

Bring up one of those favorites when we are showing work. If we don’t show it, maybe you can ask to see it. “How did you get the work?” "What did we learn?" “What's another project that was improved or changed because of it?” “What is it about that piece that would make you put it in your portfolio?” Think of a good, meaty question to ask about the project that will get you somewhere.

The lunch break is a really good time to ask a good question, when things are calmer, and everyone is within hearing range.

An exciting thing about asking yourself “What would a good student do?” is that it doesn’t take any more time to do it than not to do it. And it makes you one question closer to being a really good student.