university, where my teaching colleagues published widely
and well on film topics of the most esoteric and exotic
stripe. Highly regarded among their intellectual peers,
deeply immersed in their own academic careers, these
colleagues offered scant mirroring to the creative students
who passed through their tutelage. They neglected to supply
that most rudimentary nutrient: encouragement.
Surround yourself with people who respect and treat
you well.
CLAUDIA BLACKTo the rationally minded the mental processes of the
intuitive appear to work backwards.
FRANCES WICKESCreativity cannot be comfortably quantified in intellectual
terms. By its very nature, creativity eschews such
containment. In a university where the intellectual life is
built upon the art of criticizing—on deconstructing a
creative work—the art of creation itself, the art of creative
construction, meets with scanty support, understanding, or
approval. To be blunt, most academics know how to take
something apart, but not how to assemble it.
Student work, when scrutinized, was seldom appreciated.
Far from it. Whatever its genuine accomplishments, it was