Shh… Don’t tell Susie but I’ve hacked her blog, got past her guard dog and am here to give you the lowdown. You’ll get the gritty, juicy and somewhat scandalous truth on the Paper Bag Challenge and the five phases it incurs.

My tale starts about a year ago, going into Winter semester at Bond. Susie outlined the Paper Bag Challenge to our Visuality class while I, an innocent postgrad student, looked on in horror. No wrong answers she says. Explore your creativity she says. I narrowed my eyes and got my paranoia on. Why give us an assignment with no right answer? Her paper bags of doom (nicknamed thus by yours truly) were filled with marshmallows, popsicle sticks, random wooden blocks and other childish things. Then she reiterated there would be no wrong answer, we just needed to do something. I was wary, terrified and wondering why a bag had such power over my confidence.

Still, I decided to embrace the challenge, extend a little trust and keep my ear to the project grapevine. Yep, you guessed it, I had just entered my denial phase. I laughed, procrastinated and made up many a wonderful tale of the paper bag as a hazing assignment given to us gullible students. Yet the deadline haunted my every step. Surely we didn’t really need to do this assignment, she would tell us it was a joke next lecture or the lecture after that. Nope.

Then I entered my anger phase. Every idea I came up with was stupid. This assignment was meant to humiliate. I came to Bond to learn, not do a dumb arts and crafts assignment. Nothing was safe from my anger. I may or may not have torched a marshmallow or two in protest and rolled over the bag in defiance.

And like all things, my anger fizzled out and gave way to bargaining. I visited her in her office hours; subtly explained that my skills were in writing, not assembling visually appealing or clever contraptions. There was some cajoling, self-deprecating and an underhanded air (provided solely by me) of negotiation. In each comment, she reminded me I only had to turn something in. Darn.

From here, a dark place engulfed my life for three whole days. The depression phase was filled with gallows humour, half-hearted attempts at getting the popsicle sticks to spell “Help,” and deeply considering eating the remaining marshmallows and packing myself a lunch with the paper bag. I was going to fail this challenge, so why try.

Luckily, I entered the blessed acceptance phase shortly after. If she thought she could trick us, well I would give her something to look at. This assignment is not so mighty as to crush me, I thought. So off I went and found a teammate.  We ended up making a recorded children’s book using the contents of the bag, reshaping them for every phase of the book. In short, we stopped getting in our own way and actually did the project.

A sample from the most whimsically awesome story ever created from a paper bag challenge…

And lo and behold when the day came to turn our stuff in and participate in the Paper Bag showcase, everyone turned in something awesomely unique and fun. And we all seemed confident and relieved, like survivors of a life changing, harrowing event. We were happy, and bashfully proud of what we had made and strongly repentant that we fought the process so hard. It felt great, we had all been creative and no one was wrong. If anything, I wished my more surly earlier stages had been shorter so I could have worked on my project longer.

So I, the most reluctant of her Paper Bag pupils, do admit that Susie’s Paper Bag Challenge changed me for the better. I check myself before I wreck myself on imagined rules, genuinely trust my assignments and teachers, and actually believe in my own creativity. Further I’ve learned to take a breather and accept creativity need not be epic to be awesome. (Still, let’s not let this get back to Susie, after all, a girl has to have her mystique).

Having regaled you with my tale of woe, darkness, growth and happy endings, I can only hope you wake one day to find a Paper Bag Challenge beside your alarm clock, waiting to be completed.

Thanks for reading,

Kelsey Seeger