It was late November, before Thanksgiving, and I was preparing my dorm room for the coming holiday season. Mariah Carrey was softly singing what she wanted for Christmas, the heat was cranked up to eleven, and my cup of mint tea was lazily rolling steam into the winter air as it steeped. However this picturesque moment was shattered when i realized there was no proper place for string lights to be hung. I continued to attempt at unpacking and untangling the tangled mass of Christmas lights while frantically coming up with ideas to solve this problem.
Could I rope them from bed to bed? No that would be inconvenient and dangerous. Could I put them on the door? No no secrecy was of the utmost importance as my CA was on the hunt for holiday policy violators. could i just leave them plugged in on the floor as a last resort? No no no that simply would not do. I looked around and became interested in a small ledge above the curtains. I saw the potential for a location and was once again filled with hope. Could this be my Christmas miracle?? What came next still amazes me. In a flash of inspiration, I transformed 2 metal pen cap tabs into hanger prongs, slid them underneath the top bar of the curtains, then at long last I hung the lights. In overcoming functional fixedness, I bested the difficulties of dorm life, and came out at the end feeling like a mistletoe Macgyver.
Living in the dorms actually undoes many of the pitfalls of functional fixedness, as every item or small appliance takes on new meaning and purpose. For example I have witnessed a person making a grilled cheese sandwich by turning a toaster on its side then placing a piece of bread and slice of cheese into each slot. And it worked. Beautifully. Being forced to be creative or inventive like this is just one of the hallmark traits of college life. To which it is no surprise when one considers how many fortune 500 companies have been born in college dorm rooms. If you need proof, come find me in T-Hall and we will go watch The Social Network, while enjoying some toaster grilled cheeses.
And Let There Be Light! Ho Ho Ho
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I was intrigued by this post also! It was very fun to read and pretty accurate considering I also live in the dorms and know many of the common issues one has to overcome to get through the year. There are so many things that vary even as you go from dorm room to dorm room and you can see the different functional fixedness that has been overcome. For example, there is simply no good place to put food in a dorm room, but I keep mine in a bookshelf, my neighbor keeps hers in a shoe rack hanging in her closet. It's so fun to see this in the dorms because literally everyone's room is different because they have found different ways to get the room they want from so little materials.
This was a very entertaining and interesting. Defeating functional fixedness seems to be easier for some people than others. For example, I was on a trip with my high school class over the summer, and my friends and I accidently locked a closet door. My friends all suggested that we call the front desk of the hotel to unlock it, but then I showed them that a coin could unlock it. Also, younger people are much better at this than older people. Ever seen a little kid use a banana as a phone? They are able to see beyond the banana’s ordinary use as a food item, and turn it into a device though which their best friend can call them.
I thought that this was in interesting post! I think that younger adults have an easier time overcoming functional fixedness because we don't have the resources to be able to buy or obtain something new for every little need we have or because we have to live in dorms or apartments instead of homes we have to learn to adjust to the rules that those places have in place. The toaster being used to make grilled cheese is a perfect example of that second constraint. From my personal experience it seems as though as you grow up and you get more resources and more freedom in the place you live your ability to overcome functional fixedness becomes lower and lower, more or less.
This post is very interesting and relevant to all of us living in dorms. Although I'm not as creative as you or the person who brilliantly created the dorm version of grilled cheese, I do often use my desk drawer as a foot rest and use large pillows to block the sunlight from my eyes when I nap. I definitely agree that living in a college dorm often forces students to be creative and make use of many objects in new ways.
Haha I love this post. I feel as if in our generation, we are very privileged with our technology and other advances that we forget how to be creative sometimes, because we're so used to having everything simplified and ready to go in working order, most of the time. In cases like your Christmas light example, we need to try to escape functional fixedness and "think outside of the box." There are so many unusual uses for everyday items! For example, you can use a can opener to open those nasty thick plastic containers that are impossible to cut open with scissors. Or, you can use a Pringles canister to contain spaghetti (although you may be at risk of slight disappointed in the future when you reach for the Pringles only to find pasta).
I took a class a few semesters ago called Creative Problem Solving and the entire point of the class is basically to overcome functional fixedness and eliminate social schema that we may have. The class required us to do something different every week. The projects ranged from eat something different (or in a different way) to give something different. It was really interesting to see the different things that people could come up with and what ways they transformed common objects to be useful in a different way. In fact we would start off/ end classes by having 5 minutes to come up with as many uses for a rubber band or a cardboard box as we could. I thought this was pretty relevant & this was a great post! mistletoe Macgyver? genius !
I really enjoyed reading this blog. I was very intrigued and wasn't forced to try and pay attention. I really enjoyed your story of functional fixedness and how you came about to solve your problem. I agree with you that college life in the dorms undoes many of the problems that are associated with functional fixedness. As a college student you have to adapt and make use of the items you do have and try and and come up with other uses for them. It helps us students, to be creative and to try new things. I also find it fascinating that many fortune 500 companies started in college dorm rooms.