When I was admitted to Minnesota's Carlson School of Management late into my freshman year, I couldn’t contain my excitement. The number of doors that had suddenly opened seemed almost infinite, and I finally felt as if I had a roadmap to my post graduate life.
Entering my sophomore year as an artificial “douche,” I was welcomed into the Carlson community with loving and open arms. I followed the guidance my advisor gave me and signed up for the exact classes every Carlson kiddo goes to sleep dreaming about: accounting, business statistics, and one or two other business-centered classes. Little did I know the damage I had done. I slowly began to realize I had not transferred into the Carlson school, but rather a made-to-order (supply chain phrase) machine that continues to lower the quality of life on the West Bank more and more every day.
To be clear, I am not saying I am not happy to have transferred into the business school, but I did not fathom the amount of homogeneity I would be required to wade through for the rest of my college career. For those of you who have yet to see a flock of Carlson students scurrying to a finance class, they are exceptionally alike and tend to blend in with one another #CarlsonCamo.
Last year, in mid-college crisis and mid I-core depression, I decided to rebel against the Carlson school and take my talents back to the East Bank … partially. While I still remain a Carlson student, I decided to broaden my class schedule by taking courses focusing on design and creativity. Because Carlson’s reputation casts a shadow over many other schools at the U, many other nationally acclaimed programs often go unnoticed, such as the College of Design.
These classes were somewhat challenging for me at first. My creativity was on borderline extinction after a sustained Carlson-heavy curriculum. Through pushing its students through a cookie-cutter process, Carlson seemingly instills that there is only one way out their graduation door (to Target). There is no creative way. There are no trailblazers; there is only the path that those who have graduated before us have already walked. So, naturally it was difficult to use the side of my brain that I had been telling to keep quiet for so long.
According to author Daniel Pink of "A Whole New Mind," scholars who will succeed in our generation will not necessarily be those with a strong GPA or impressive internship. Instead, Pink writes that the future belongs to those “right-brained thinkers” – that is, people who can create, whether that be through art, inventions, storytelling, etc.; the list of possibilities seems almost endless.
While I continue to believe that Carlson is a great school, I also think they a do a great job sprinkling breadcrumbs from our graduation stage to the front doors of any company with their name above a West Bank classroom. And while many students are happy with the way the school sends them, there are some of us that do our best to push back, and have decided to let the other side of our brain do the thinking for once.
