Admission requirements
This course is only available to students of the Honours College GGA
Description
Your time at university is full of opportunities, but that also means there are many choices. How do you figure out what you want, what steps can you take and what to do when things get difficult? This personal growth course will help you get the tools, skills and confidence to navigate these questions by applying the innovation methodology of Design Thinking to your life.
You will get to know yourself better by journaling about your energy patterns and your strengths. In addition, you will reflect on your goals at university and beyond, and will brainstorm about multiple futures for yourself and prototype those. You will learn how to visualise your network and expand it, which is a valuable skill for the rest of your career. Finally, you will learn tools to deal with things like obstacles like stress, dysfunctional beliefs and perfectionism.
This course uses insights from the domains of design, psychology and career development, and relies on small groups within class - guided by a peer mentor - to stimulate discussions on a personal level and to support each other. Through various exercises and network conversations, you will expand your comfort zone and gain more clarity and confidence on how you can design your future. At the end, you will compile a reflection portfolio will everything you have learned about yourself and how you will apply it in your next steps.
Course objectives
At the end of this course, you will be able to:
Articulate your short-term and long-term goals
Identify what gives and drains energy, and formulate implications for your future based on these insights
Articulate where you currently stand in the domains of work/study, love, health and play and formulate commitments to improve one or more of these
Articulate your strengths and talents, partially by using insights from outsiders
Envision three different life paths for the coming five years
Visualise your personal network and expand it
Reframe dysfunctional beliefs
Find and ask for support during your study life whenever you get stuck
Timetable
On the right side of programme front page of the studyguide you will find links to the website and timetables, uSis and Brightspace.
Mode of instruction
This course takes place on Fridays from 13.15-15.00, in seminar-format. Attendance is mandatory. The outline is as follows:
Design Thinking basics + life design dashboard: by learning to think like a designer and to take small steps (a bias to action) you will be able to make significant steps in designing your future. You will learn about the innovation methodology of Design Thinking and reflect on where you stand in your life in terms of study, relations, health and leisure and formulate a small commitment to improve one of these areas (6 Sept)
Goal setting: having clear goals will help you stay motivated and on track, so today we will reflect on what you want to get out of university and how you might contribute to society as a whole (13 Sept)
Strengths Finding: knowing your strengths will help you determine the right path for you, so in this session you will reflect on the things are you naturally good at, including your blind spots (20 Sept)
Network visualisation & networking conversations: learning from other people is the fastest way to advance your life design, so in this class you will visualize is your current network and understand how networking conversations will help you keep growing (11 October)
Energy mapping & Odyssey Visions: if you can do more things that energize you and fewer things that drain you, you will lead a happier life, so today, so based on your journaling, you will define what activities that give or take energy and figure out how you can experiment with those. The second part of class is devoted to your Odyssey Vision (your 3 possible paths for you for the coming 5 years). Realising there are multiple paths that will make you happy is often a liberating thought for students (18 October)
Reframing dysfunctional beliefs: unhelpful or untrue beliefs (like “I need to make all the right choices or otherwise I won’t find a satisfying job”) can cause a lot of stress. We will practice reframing them, so you can continue to build your way forward (1 November)
Identifying opportunities & support and making choices: Figuring out interesting opportunities in our information-overloaded world is not easy, so today we will see who and where in the university you can find opportunities and support. You will also learn why keeping all your options open is actually not a good idea (8 November)
Dealing with obstacles & building resilience: there are many obstacles that can obstruct your life design, and knowing how to deal with those can help you when you feel stuck. In this session we will focus on how can you deal with perfectionism, imposter syndrome and fear of failure (15 November)
Alumni session: as learning from others is incredibly useful to shape your own future, we will learn from alumni how they shaped their path so you can build on these lessons (29 November)
Final presentations and formulating next steps: to keep building your way forward and to show how far you have already come, you will share your growth during the course, as wel as the steps you will take to keep designing your future (6 December)
Assessment method
As life design is not something to grade quantitatively, this course will have a pass/fail grade based on your final reflection portfolio.
Reading list
The book Designing Your Life by Bill Burnett and Dave Evans will be mandatory reading. Additional literature will be announced via Brightspace
Registration
Contact
Dr. Bram Hoonhout, b.m.hoonhout@ha.leidenuniv.nl