Mind Map

In-Comm 165 the topic this week was mind maps. What I was trying to achieve at first I did not know what to do. As I thought about my life, my big birthday started to come to pop in my mind. In the first image I started thinking and I looked at a mind map. In the center of it I have a problem and then have different subjects come off the branches of what I love to do and have an interest in. What I achieved is a mind map at a certain point in time in my life. The second mind map, is about my big birthday, 21 years old. My life now is a little hectic and my birthday has always been something I always think of in advance. I had a problem at first coming up with the main theme for the mind maps. I wanted to do something interesting involving my life style. I had a problem finding a topic that I felt was relevant to today. So I sat there and started drawing on a piece of paper. I first saw the “branches” and not the whole image. It helped me think of ideas when I drew branches and started putting words on them that came to mind. The more branches I had, all of a sudden an ( aha moment!) has showed up. The visual image of my life started to form on the page. I started filling it in with words and doodles. I worked backwards with the first mind map. The branches became the central idea. So that’s how I branded one mind map and the other mind map was my birthday. What I would do differently next time is to start from the center outward. First, have a center ( main idea) and then fill out the different branches. A problem I had creating this was the waiting time of 24 hours and then coming back the next day and to continue to add on new ideas. I tried to structure the mind maps and show them by colors and visually how important they are to me. I also added doodles to make it more interesting to look at and to show why they’re so important to me. The 3rd mind map just has a lot of activites I like to do and I couldn’t come up with much for the central idea so I just went crazy and kept going. For the 4th mind map it was getting difficult because I didn’t know what to put down in the center. It was fun to do and once I saw what I had done it was very useful to have created this image. Having this image has exactly opened up my mind and thoughts about what is going on in my life. My birthday mind map is especially useful. I can see why it has always has been last-minute planning. This will help me plan ahead of time. I realized from the class readings that it is not easy to come up with great ideas on paper. More importantly, visual skills can help us better understand and create new ideas that come to our minds today in the world. I hope one day I would get to draw a mind map again and do something better and more creative then what I have drawn.