I first came to MinervaWhile I first came to Minerva, I came here largely driven by curiosity. As with a lot of the choices I make in life, my decision to come to Minerva choice that I felt like choosing turned out to be the right choice, although I also had reasons for not coming to Minerva.

After a year, I have found that why Minerva exists is even more important is bigger than my choice to come here. So, if I am able to grow very deeply to any aspect of its value, it is worth the journey.

+ Multiple levels of learning

I have always been a liberal arts person, believing in interdisciplinary approach and old book knowledge examined by time. MInerva is very much a liberal arts college given its design in academics. It also has aits strong focus on projects, which requires further knowledge transfer and application, rather than exams.

In addition, it is still in the process of being shaped, a school in building and everyone here is fully aware of this. We may learn as much as thinking meta about the curriculum as finishing the actual assignments. As students, weMinervans have faith in Minerva, despite the fact that we will be the first graduating class, and there is to some extent, although there is no prior success to copy or follow. Instead, we must create — to survive as well as thrive.

+ Right crowd to be with

As the famous Holstee Manifesto goes: “Life is about the people you meet and the things you create with them. It is a right crowd of cool humans to be with. Period.” Minervans are ultra-curious. I hear “what if…” “why?” and “Google it” so often here. There are lots of hugs and signs of gratitude, both big and small, as well as so many serendipitous moments. I can knock on a friend’s door at 1 am to sing an impromptu song aboutof fromage and onions, before resuming my studies. Or, take aA 15 minute tea break, which time ends up expanding into an hour- long argument about theof definition of the word definition. Minerva is a place of instantaneous, happy learning.

But it is more than just a tight-knit community. It is a family to fall back on anytime I am out exploring the city. So far, we have only lived in San Francisco. However, I am so excited to continue to support everyone as we explore the six other more world cities we will live in next.

+ High fidelity life, aka real world

Unlike mainly two categories of people you meet in traditional colleges, professors and students, you meet people from all walks of life as a minerva student. Not saying that the roles define the identities and all students are the same. But you only get to exposed to groups of people who have very similar abundance of life experiences and are in the similar life stage. Plus the nature of the college environment, it is easy to summarize couple categories of interactions you experience in traditional campuses, classmates, project teammates and friends you see every week in the student club meeting.

I would probably not meet Nana, this 71-year-old writer who talked about her 20 year homeless experience in San Francisco. I might not be introduced to John Ross, who turned to be a very inspirational journalist that influences me a lot. I may not know this group of people who are very passionate about consciousness and learn all those interesting findings about lucid dreaming. I may not have role model designers talking about his/her journey 10 feet from you. Many of these valuable human interactions kickstarted my intellectual explorations. They are different from inspirational TED talks as you not only get information but also start to substantially experience the multitude of the world.

And you get more curious about this world that you are living in. Which may get dangerous haha.

So, Come and hustle. Join this crowd of nomads who are constantly exploring and embracing the uncertainty. Get curious and nerd out together.

when I forget to laugh

when I stare into human eyes

when I wipe my tears

I say this to myself

when you hold my hands

when you point at the blue clouds

when you smile at the dogs

The world is beautiful

no matter how many times you might deny it

@CrissyFields

Fear for Failure has been identified as one of the biggest reasons that get people stuck or unwilling to try. Interestingly, fear for failure is very prominent amongst high-performing adults. Earlier, I have always considered the fear for failure a cultural phenomenon as Chinese school culture is very competitive. However it is a universal suffering. Deep in human nature, we master the art of pretending of inner fear for failure but insecurities never disappear. Such fear strongly discourages learning ventures.

Given my background in Psychology, it is natural for me to go back to development age to think about the potential relations between the pervasiveness of Imposter Syndrome and Education of Failure from young?On the one hand, I am interested in learning about the tipping points of how many emerging adults unlearn the fear of failure. On the other hand, I am more interested in learning about how kids learn about and internalize Failure from peers, teachers and parents.

Here are some questions I want to explore regarding teaching Failure:

How might we capture, reserve and celebrate the Failure moments of the kids?

Kids are inherently risk-takers but testing takes a lot of that away as testing is about getting the RIGHT answer. What are those moments where kids uphold the thought like ‘I should have been’, ‘I am not as…’, etc.

How might we know how kids know and learn about Failure? What other ideas do they associate failure with?

Many developmental psychology studies have revealed intuitive comparison between the peers are the first few encounters of failure upheld by kids. The awareness are connected with other ideas like comparison, avoidance of effort and inclination to intelligence.

How might we Re-brand Failure to kids and the adults? How can experiences of failure be celebrated?

Here are some interesting examples how people play around with the idea of failure with growth mindset.

“Scientists fail all the time. We just brand it differently. We call it data.”

“ I want to be the author of the story. And you can’t do that unless you own the story and dig into it.” — — Brene Brown

It took me a while to come to this ecstatic moment of self-revelation, since being a girl has for long been something I am ashamed of. Expected to be a boy but born as a second girl, I had been a disappointment to my traditional Chinese family. And my mom was blamed for not fulfilling her responsibility as a good wife for not bringing any boy to the family.

In my culture, aside from biology, gender implies social responsibilities, expectations, and capabilities. From a young age, I became very aware that in my culture girls are associated with uselessness. Because of this, I always strived to be better than the boys around me. Starting from as early as kindergarten, my ultimate drive was to be better than the boys in class so my mom could be proud. As I got older, I practiced characteristics I believed were masculine, like independence and toughness. I tried to act like a boy to compensate for my biological gender. Being tough like a guy meant not putting my family to shame. It was simple and working well, until I recognized the deeply gentle soul in myself.

And some people call it ‘weak’.

Three years ago, I came to a very privileged liberal arts college in the United States. I had never written a paper nor had I even been around so many people from distant cultures. I became overwhelmed and started to cry over the numerous don’t-know-what-to-do moments. I hated that weakness in me.

The winter in Maine was particularly cold for me. I would sit in my room, look at the snow and blame myself for my misery. As always, I tried to be very honest, even ruthless, about my disadvantages. I listed dozens of reasons why I was stuck. None of them was helpful and I fell into a rabbit hole of self-blame for not being strong and dealing with my problems. I could not understand myself with kindness because I was obligated to be strong as a man.

Luckily, after so many cold nights and help from some friends, I gradually realized my false beliefs. I have wrongly believed that being a girl is a sin, not being tough is being a girl thus toughness is a mask that I should always carry. However, being tough is not a male or female trait, it is a human trait. But in order to stay tough, we are allowed to embrace our vulnerability.

A woman is an individual, as is a man. Women don’t need to be superwomen to prove their self-worth.

However, it is easier to say than to believe. For me, gender stereotyping is not just a distant systemic social problem. It is as concrete as stone. It has affected me personally since my birth, and it has been so for many fellow women. For a very long time, I thought of my gender and the characteristics associated with it as a fault, and had to tackle it on my own.

Switching to an environment with less gender stereotypes does not automatically change my mindset. The harms of gender stereotypes are not only about the lack of practical opportunities or the stigma it poses onto women. Many women have internalized their perceptions of gender stereotypes in relation to themselves and that would still influence them. As we are fighting against social stereotypes against women on the systemic level, and encouraging women to embrace themselves, some of us can still be torn inside, unsure of ourselves and wracked with self-doubt, finding it very hard indeed to change our own old mindset as individuals.

I am still learning how to recognize myself as a human regardless what gender I identify. Embracing my vulnerability has little to do with my gender but my humanness. Forgiving my gender allows me to celebrate my gender thus myself. And I grow into a different kind of confidence.

Thanks for your time to stay with me for a while. Happy International Women Day, to you all!

I celebrate my gender was originally published in de-Label Ourselves on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Every iPhone has a proud label: Designed in California. However, few people are aware of the abundant history of design long before Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak started making personal computers in the garage.

Barry Katz, has recounted the long influence of Design on Technology in his new book <Make It New: The History Of Silicon Valley Design>. I am very happy to meet the great mind behind this great book for a quite amusing conversation in the Cafe of CCA on a sunny afternoon.

Would you share some of your college experience and what do you think of the education that you got?

B: I come out of a science family, and started in the college doing Mathematics. Long story short, I migrated to history and philosophy of science and that led to the history of technology. I get more interested in technology per say and more interested how people use technology and impacts on people’s everyday life. And I said to my friend one day and he said you meant design. And I said what, what is that? Since that day, I continued to explore what that meant. I did my first degree at McGill and second one in LSE, and a PhD in UC Santa Cruz. The first job after I got out of graduate school is at engineering school at Stanford and I was identified as the outside person looking in. So, I was in the department of mechanical engineering but I am not an engineer and I have not taken a single engineering class in my life.

I taught in Stanford full time for 7 or 8 years, all of the complex bureaucratic history. Out of a chance, I later moved to CCA and began to experiment in art school. Previously, I have been teaching science engineering students to be more humanistic. And then the challenge is to make art students to take science and technology more seriously. After 2 or 3 years at CCA, Stanford asked me to go back. However, I was enjoying this new challenge and decided to do both.

You seem like remain in academia most of the time. Have you ever become a practicing designer?

B: No, it is too late. but also yes, in a sense, I have started thinking myself as a practicing designer. Designers have different medium, like pixels, thermal models, etc. My medium is words. I know it can sound very cute when I say it but I am very serious about it. I design in the medium of language and participate in design that way. Another way to put it, i would say, in old days, design begins when designers sit down and draw, or flash creative ideas out on paper. Today design begins with research and my concrete contribution to design is research. I would like to say, there are no project that you can work on that are not so technical and future-oriented that does not have a context that can help you understand what it is.

Research on design as a discipline or, excuse me if I am too narrow, something like user research?

B: There are user experience researchers out there as an established field. But as I sit in a design project, it is research into the origin of the problem itself. I have done research presentations on everything from magnetic dissonance imaging to credit cards. I have done some rather technical things and cereals and chewing gums. But one thing of consultancy is that you are dealing with issues all over the industries. Most important thing i have to say about design is that it starts off really broad and narrows down and goes broad again.

Do you mean historically speaking?

B: yes. The first designers a hundred years ago, they want to design the whole world. They were very idealistic, political and naive. They did not do a good job but they had very beautiful ideas. Then design has got more professional over the century. We got very good technically very good but much narrower in our scope. And now, we are at a point that we can do both: technically high-level, also we can ask designers to solve some really big problems, like wicked problems. They are the problems that don’t have a single answer and not easy to define, for instance, terrorism, urban violence and pediatric obesity. Designers are working on all of those. This is design going big again, not with 19th century shallow roots, but with 21st century depth.

How do you define your relationship with design, do you primarily identify as a historian?

B: A few years ago, I would have said yes. I would not have predicted this but I find myself increasingly involved with the business world. I am advising startups and speak internationally to business. I have just gone to China, Japan, Thailand and Korea a few weeks ago. I certainly would like to think it as a valuable voice but someone else has contention to that.

One of the really interesting things is that design has become more important to people who are not designers now, that design as a methodology, as some people would call it design thinking. I don’t use that phrase very often myself. As a psychologist, you might not find it not as much a stretch as you think it is. The difference between an artist and a designer is that: artists work for themselves and they unleash their imaginations to create something that they are completely responsible for; if I am a designer, I am are creating something for you, not according to my personal vision, but your needs. I have to understand you, get to know you and begin to experience the world the way you do. I have to have empathy. That’s what I understand design to people who are not professional designers as a methodology. Some of these principles work in psychology as well.

Totally. I heard from John Maeda the other day that ‘psychology is design’.

B: But wait, he is half right. Design is Psychology; Psychology is Design.

Awesome, that completes it! Now,I’d like to ask about a theme that recurs in your book. what would be one or two observations and insights you would offer to understand design history from the ups and downs of design consultancy?

B: This is a very sophisticated question. I am very impressed. Here is one thing: the world of consultancies, you get samples of many things. You may have the opportunities to work with a hundred companies from a dozen of industries. And that can be just wonderful. I would think consultancies a good place to start a career, not necessarily a place of you to stay for your whole life, or maybe a good place to end your career. I have seen so many designers quitting great consultancies and focus on one area, which consultancies by definition don’t do. It is neither a good thing nor a bad thing. It is a fact of life.

Second thing about the consultancies, you don’t have ultimate control over what you are working one. You finish and submit your deliverables, hopefully you get paid and they come back again. Once it gets off your hand, it becomes theirs. They can take the idea and build it and you can point to your idea in the store. They can also take your idea and kill it and that would be the end of the it. Or they can take the idea and change it. It’s theirs. They bought it. It is their property. Consultancy is more like the early exploratory stage. For example, consulting for Apple computer is part of the ideation but working for Apple, you will be part of developing the product. For some people, that is not important, for some people, it is.

Another segue question inspired by you. In addition to joining design consultancy or a design team within a company, we also see quite a few design consultancies acquired by other firms like Mckinsey. What do you think of it?

B: I would not say quite a few but yes. For me, it is a real confirmation of many arguments I made in my book about growing importance of design and the growing acceptance that design strategy is as important as business plan. In the case of John Maeda, the idea that an investment firm would hire a art school professor, the former president of RISD as a design partner, the investors need to have the design competence to evaluate the prospects for those company. McKinsey, in addition to their technical and analytical abilities, they need an internal design competency also. On the one hand, I am surprised when seeing the announcement as nobody has leaked any information but I am not surprised that it happened because it is consistent. But here comes the big challenge. Do you know the expression: you don’t kill the goose to get the golden egg. McKinsey needs Lunar to stay Lunar and it does not want Lunar to become McKinsey. Another interesting thing is that, companies which we don’t think as product companies, start to build internal design groups, banks, financial services companies, consulting, management consultancies. We start to see design thinking become really popular in financial services. What designers do and how they do it? Some of these techniques go beyond the coffee mugs they design everyday.

I have heard you have been to China? What were you doing there?

B: Lots of times.Talking, consulting. I have spoken to IxDC conference, DYLO, which was 1600 people wanna learn about design thinking. I talk to companies and receive chinese visitors here. I also run workshops through Stanford, IDEO, and myself.

What be a one single piece of advice to give college students who aspire to be designers? What would be one thing we should definitely learn before getting out of college?

B: One thing is hard. (L: I will give you two, ha) Great. I am going to be China-centered to give the advices. Here is one but I am not sure if it is the first. Learn English. I am always embarrassed to say that because I am not saying cultures of english speaking countries are superior. But reality is international commerce takes place in English. I want my students to have skills that make them successful and powerful as possible. English is one of them, otherwise you are at disadvantage. For China, the first step is to develop the manufacturing competence, the second is to develop an internal market or Chinese products, the third step is Chinese products to the global market. And people would be very helpful in the design world if they are competent in speaking English.

A second thing has got some culture overtones. As much as I understand China is in a hurry, it is not that easy. I would encourage my students to be a bit more patient to require the deep skills like thinking skills rather than immediate technical skills solely, even though those skills may turn to a cute product, or an easy job or a graduate degree.

And the third thing is closely related. It took England two hundred years to absorb the impact from its industrial evolution and US one hundred years but only one generation for China. I don’t want to see China make the same mistakes as US and England made in the course of modernization. England destroyed its air, forest and water. It took them forever to recover. The US destroyed its labor force, concerning inhuman working conditions. It took decades to recover that. In China’s rush into the 21st century, I don’t want people just to focus on the success of western competences. I want people like you to focus on the failures of the west and not make the same mistakes twice, like what is been brought up in Under the dome. Of all things, environment comes first. You might say that I just want to be a designer, why do I need to think about this? the fact is everyone should. I want designers to focus on small things that they work on but also the bigger things that are part of the system.

B: Does it make sense?

L: A ton. It’s been a delight.