How to become a superstar student, part 6

What has creativity to do with school? Probably everything.

Michael Geisen simply defines creativity as the ability to come up with something new (new to you or new to the whole world) that has value or use. It can happen anywhere, in any field, at any time. Including in school.

To create something, he says, you have to be willing to change the way you have always done things. At school, one of the easiest ways to do this is to ask the teacher about an alternative assignment, one that gets at the same concept to be learned, but from a different approach. This is not asking for extra credit to...