Yesterday, I shared this picture for Thematic Apperception Test (TAT) with my students. The responses that I received ranged from a simple description of the picture, to an unnecessary crisis situation, towards which the main character is rushing to solve/ avert; some wrote preconceived stories, even without seeing the details in the picture and many expressed thoughts that displayed the imagination of a 10 year old kid.
As we discussed their responses, we all agreed to the fact that the aim of this activity is to gauge a person’s virtues, values, beliefs and mindset. We further realized that most of the students had written stories by extracting information not from their experiences of life, but from a template that they had formed while preparing for the SSB through interaction with friends on social media, reading books and discussion with mentors.
This template made their stories stereotype, lacking creativity and most importantly devoid of their exclusive ‘fragrance’.
A story that came to my mind after seeing the picture is as follows:
“Prithvi, a young intern working in an industrial unit, was always full of life and encouraged his team to be more cohesive and competitive. He aimed at having a closely knit team, where every member counted.
At the end of the day’s work, he often challenged them to sprint with him or indulged in some such bonding activity, with an aim to motivate them and generate a feeling of well being and comradeship.
As the days passed, through his little acts of promoting togetherness, his team started to gel better. He was always very open to interaction, which led to greater trust building and the team coined a motto: “One for All and All for One”.
Prithvi went out of his way to ascertain and resolve their personal and professional issues. He took out time to educate them and improve their threshold of professional knowledge, so that the team became an asset to the organization.
Prithvi became a role model for his team, who loved and admired him as their leader”
Having heard the story, the group then wanted to know how we can improve our ‘creativity’, since it is the single most important thing to perform well in psychology.
Well, my answer to this question is that:
“Creativity is nothing else, but Intelligence having Fun!!”
There is no way that a person can be creative without being bright and intelligent. Now, the genetic component of intelligence simply determines the upper limit of a person’s intellectual level, whereas, it’s the environment that dictates whether you will actually reach this maximum level.
In doing so, one will have to have a candid interaction with the environment every day and carry home a basket full of learning’s that will boost your wisdom. Because acquiring bookish knowledge can be tiring sometimes, but seeking wisdom through life experiences is always very inspiring.
I have come across two categories of candidates, who are unable to reap the full benefit of what I have just said:
First are those who are least inquisitive and fairly oblivious of their surroundings. Mind you, “Not knowing is bad, but to not wish to know more is disastrous”.
Second are those who have a delusion of adequacy. “Their confidence is ignorance”. It is good to remember that if one is feeling ‘cocky’, it’s because there is something that you don’t know.
Digressing a bit from story writing, many candidates also suggest that to make it through in the SSB, you have to be simply honest and confident. Once again please be warned that:
“Zeal and confidence without knowledge is like fire without light”.
The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, but it’s the illusion of being knowledgeable.
Hence, while discussing further, we all finally arrived at a common consensus that the only source of knowledge is experience, which could be physical or virtual (preferred is former).
Rather than sitting on a couch and practice story writing and sentence making, it is better to step out, observe a lot, interact with wise people, be inquisitive to understand, more than just knowing a fact, pen down your daily experiences to enhance your expression and flow of thoughts. Upgrade the information gained, by reading more about it at the end of the day.
Lastly, it is most essential to develop pleasant social graces that help you to live a life of harmony and abundance along with others. Stable, well groomed people will invariably express mature and balanced views in their stories. Remember that “There is no greater disability than a bad attitude”.
Live happy and celebrate every moment of your life!!
PS: Inspite of my best efforts to explain that there may not be a requirement of creating a crisis situation just because the person is running wearing formals, some candidates have asked me to give some more relevant themes. So, here goes:
- A prank being played on someone in a Business School (Needs a “Khurafati” mind of a potential officer).
- An out-of-the-box idea to liven up a dull day at workplace (requires a sharp innovative mind).
- Improving responses at training centre (asking trainees to change into different dresses, like formals, sports, casual, etc to improve “Chatki”. It’s called “Patti Parade” in Academy).