In this episode of Roompact’s ResEdChat, guest host Dustin Ramsdell reconnects with Sean Watson, a returning guest and now a Roompact blogging team member, to explore how ResLife pros can nurture creativity both in and outside of work. Sean shares why creativity isn’t just for artists and how embracing play, structure, and self-expression can actually make you better at your job. From performing poetry to writing emails with flair, this conversation is an honest and inspiring look at the power of creativity in student affairs and beyond.
Guest: Sean Watson (he/him/his), Interim Director for Religious and Spiritual Life at University of Rochester
Host: Dustin Ramsdell, Independent Higher EdTech Content Creator
Listen to the Podcast:
Watch the Video:
Show Notes:
- ResEdChat Episode #72: Integrating Wellness into a Residential Curriculum with Sean Watson
- Keri Smith Books
- March Graphic Novel Trilogy
- Creative Whack Pack
Roompact’s ResEdChat podcast is a platform to showcase people doing great work and talk about hot topics in residence life and college student housing. If you have a topic idea for an episode, let us know!
Transcript:
Dustin Ramsdell:
Welcome back, everyone, to Roompact’s ResEd Chat podcast. If you’re new to the show, every episode, our team of hosts brings you timely discussions on a variety of topics of interest to higher professionals who work in and with university housing, residence life, residential education, whatever you might call it. And this is another in our series that we get to do every year highlighting our various members of our blogging team.
And folks might be familiar with our guest today. He was a guest actually on this show last year and is now back again as a member of the Roompact blogging team, so we’re happy to have him back. I certainly encourage folks to go listen to that episode last year, it was a good one, just to give a little bit more flavor and color to our conversation here. So we’ll link out to that in show notes.
But Sean, if you want to just briefly reintroduce yourself, or if there’s maybe any updates since last year, and then we’ll get into our topic for the day.
Sean Watson:
Yeah. So, hello. Sean Watson, pronouns he or they. So I’m currently an associate director in residential life, so been doing the Res Life thing for a while at the University of Rochester. I will be, probably by the time this episode airs though, the interim director of spiritual life at my university. So yeah, taking an interim step out of Res Life for a minute, which is weird for me after a 15-year career doing this work. But yeah, I’m excited to talk about folding all of those things. I think yes, spiritual life and residence life can have a lot in common around supporting students in all the ways we support our students.
Dustin Ramsdell:
Yeah, that’s what I appreciated about our prior conversation and this one of a lot of this internal work or your perspectives, how you approach this as much as the developing strategy and missions and tactics and those sort of things. It’s like how do we take care of ourselves or bring our worldview to bare, bring ourselves into the work and all that kind of stuff.
So before we get to all that though, I’m curious just from your journey with all that you do and all that you explore and are interested in, what inspired you specifically to want to join the Roompact blogging team?
Sean Watson:
So I think that actually connects a little bit with the topic of the broader chat today is around creativity. I’m currently a PhD student, not in dissertation writing stage just yet, but I am doing a lot of papers, academic work, reading lots of academic work. And I have found that my capacity to, even just time-wise, to read creative stuff, read non-fiction things, is kind of tanking. And so being on the Roompact blog, I have a required writing thing to do that doesn’t necessarily need to be cited and have five chapters and a bibliography and communicate in APA style, that I can be a little more playful. I can be a little more gut driven. And so certainly that’s a big piece of it.
I also love being in conversation. I am a consummate extrovert and extrovert in between in physical space together, but also extrovert in intellectually. I love expressing. I love being a part of a team that like, “Let’s talk about ideas.” And so that’s been really generative for me just to be in a space. And I think the other team members on the blog writing team had different ways of thinking about me, so I’m just like, “Oh, I love how they thought about XYZ.” So it’s been really interesting to be a part of a writing team. And I know think this is often a part in the marketing of join the blogging team, try out a higher ed space that’s not exactly higher ed, not exactly in a college environment. And so it’s been a fun foray into ed tech world for a little step.
Dustin Ramsdell:
Yeah, definitely. I think it is, yeah, I’ve had similar experiences of doing just contract, freelance, project-based stuff with different organizations and doing that throughout my career and being definitely where I feel like I’ve done some of my best creative work, just even in service of very different missions and goals and outcomes and things, but knowing that I was able to serve those effectively through collaborating with other people.
And I think, yeah, just even on our topic, I think it is a perfect segue of that idea of nurturing creativity, idea generation. How are you conveying ideas in a clear and coherent cohesive way? And I think it is something that can be just nurturing to yourself on a personal level, but maybe it is bringing professional things in or getting a mixture of both. But I think it can be something where it is, I think, a good fit for a lot of people to have a side project where maybe they’re trying to put themselves out there in some way to connect with people, share ideas and all that. So I’m glad that you took the plunge and have been creating the content here.
And I think what I have appreciated is that Paul is the curator of the team. I think he does a very good job bringing in a lot of different perspectives and everything, and these episodes where you like to try to bring more of the warm personal touch to some of the concepts of folks who have been exploring in their blogs and everything. But with this one, yeah, it’s sort of meta in a sense too. I think I was speaking just very broadly about creativity, creative endeavors and that sort of thing. So I’ll position this to you, and I think you may have an interesting perspective on this. What is your perspective on how Res Life pros can bring more creativity into their work?
Sean Watson:
Context for my academic background, certainly I have a master’s degree in higher education. My undergraduate degree is in English, creative writing, and French, and within particular, within the French language space, really dove into French literature, French culture, French writing, French creativity, writ large. And so I am coming at creativity from a language-based space. So I am not a visual artist. My stick figures, even those look bad. And so I will contextualize that art can be, and creativity, I’ll even go less art, more creativity, can be lots of different things.
And where I can see people, and I’ve spoken to people about this, constraining themselves or having a deficit or a negative mindset. “Oh, I’m not a creative person.” Okay, let’s push back on that. Even me kind of playfully saying that my stick figures are bad, there is no such thing as bad art and there’s no such thing as bad creativity.
And so I think that certainly I’ve done lots of trainings in RA training, student leadership training, around a growth mindset and around a positive orientation to our work and not poopooing ourselves automatically. And I think being creative is one of those really valuable spaces for us to engage in that way. So I think a lot of people when I’m working with them on a growth mindset automatically go to academics. “Oh, I got a D on this test and I’m not a bad person, but I didn’t do well in this moment.” But there’s a lot of emotions tied up into academics. Our students are spending lots of money to be here. Their families are investing in them to be here. And so creative acts can be a really interesting space for us to play. And so that’s in the student space.
But as a professional, I think a lot of our jobs, and I love the pattern of the year that I know that I’m going to be doing more roommate mediations probably in October after the honeymoon period has ended. And that has been every October since I joined Residence Life as a student staff member back in 2007. And so we know these things. We get stuck in the pattern of them. And certainly our students have changed. The world is radically different than what it was in 2007, but some of these patterns are still playing out.
Engaging in creative acts or engaging in creative spaces allows me to think a little bit differently, allows myself to exercise a different part of my brain than just being like, “And again, okay, another year of doing the same exact thing.” I think probably I imagine, and I’ve spoken with my colleagues about this too, I got into a higher ed job because I did not want to work a corporate 9:00 to 5:00 where August was the same as January, was the same as November. I am kept fresh. I’m kept interested because things are changing. But if I have found myself getting into that rote space, that being creative can be really important.
Dustin Ramsdell:
Yeah. And I think one aspect of what you’re saying is I think what I’m getting from what you’re putting out there is that there’s… I’m actively processing here. So I think it’s like there’s two full things. One is that I think creativity can or creative endeavors, habits, whatever, can exist on their own. That idea of, especially in the idea of if you are creating art, it can be just for its own sake and it can be, I think at its core, to me it’s almost just like art is when you’re trying to convey something to somebody. And that could be through a stick figure. It could be through a song.
It could be through whatever modality it is, because I even consider podcasting for me because it’s almost like, especially with interviewing people, it’s like improvisational. You never really know what they’re going to give you. You have to play off it and whatever else. But it’s like, yeah, I’m trying to convey something to people and it blurs a little bit more with my professional life, but I think being able to do creative things for their own sake that feel maybe isolated and whatever, but it’s still just that part of your daily routine and habits and diet and all that. So that’s one part of it.
But then I think what just caught my attention is for me, with podcasting or perhaps with writing, whatever, I think recognizing there can be value instead of having a sandbox to play in, some aspect of routine that can facilitate opportunities for creativity. So the idea of… Because I think you were saying, yeah, you want to try to maybe avoid jobs that are so rote and so routine and so repeated, I think there’s always going to be some aspect to that interprofessional lives. So it’s like you can maybe slide in the spectrum a little bit, but then if it’s something like roommate mediations, yeah, that’s always going to happen maybe around the same year. There’s always going to be bounds to that kind of work, and then there can be a way that you’re approaching or whatever, so that that’s not maybe the best example, but that came up in my mind.
So I’m curious how you take that of these opportunities. Well, I have to write a blog post. Obviously it needs to be… It’s just words on a page, so there’s a bound. But then it’s like you can play around a lot with air of like, well, maybe I want it be more first person than I, or a little more personal, less so, or a little more jovial. What’s the tone? And so that idea of getting these opportunities to play around a particular sandbox that gives you some structure, maybe gives you something to work with or start from, and that being able facilitate creativity. So I put a finer point on this, the idea of something that has bounds and limitations and that also maybe is frequent. Because I think that idea of like, okay, I’ve got to write a new thing every month. I got to put out a podcast episode every other week or something. So just how do you respond to that, I guess, is a way to bring that into your life is trying to find those opportunities that have repeated, structured engagements for creativity.
Sean Watson:
Yeah. And so I think as I reflect on my undergraduate degree where I was taking advanced poetry writing. I was taking translating poetry, a lot of these classes that I had to produce. And I think even the external pressure to produce, because again, I love poetry. I am generally a very artistic weirdo as just a way of being in my life. But yeah, finding those external pushes to engage in creativity, to engage in art, to push your boundaries a little bit.
And it’s a trite statement that artists don’t like a blank page because there’s possibility and endless possibility and a blank page. And I don’t know where to go from that. But being able to say, “Well, I have to tell a story to Res Life folks and I need to share a personal bit of myself, but also have it feel like I’m adding to the professional conversation, adding to the growth of our field and how we’re thinking about these pieces,” has been interesting and generative. And I’ll use probably the word generative quite a few times throughout this podcast because it is a requirement to create.
And we are always creating and writing. I think about my email that is continuing to grow while I’m on this podcast right now. So I’m always writing and I think about, I’m not going to fully go Marie Kondo on here, but writing an email about one more damage billing thing, not going to spark joy. Can I trash the email? No. But thinking about spaces where I am able to be joyful, to find joy, to find some spark of life within the daily things that I am writing, I think even that’s influenced a little bit even writing emails. I’m thoughtful of word choice. I’m a little more playful. I love a good alliteration. That’s just my English major tick. How many times can I paste this letter in the same space or play with a little bit?
I think it provides just some light playfulness because things can feel so serious. And I don’t need to go into a rant about 2025 and politics and the world being a really hard place right now. I think everybody is aware that the world is a really difficult place right now regardless of where you’re in on the political spectrum. Things are fraught. There is tension there. And if we can use creativity to find even 1% of our energy, 1% of our time can help us be a little happier, then yes, and having bounds and requiring it. So I do it for the blog writing position and the team. Set your own boundaries. Do something and say, “I’m going to have a checklist and my daily checklist is to write a haiku every morning,” and doesn’t have to be good, doesn’t have to be bad. You’re just writing and engaging and thinking.
Dustin Ramsdell:
Yeah, I like that because what it centers on for me to distill that down is there’s a part of creativity, because this is more getting into innovation or whatever. It’s getting away from whatever to you feels like normal, like thinking differently and all that. So because I was even thinking that idea of certainly, yeah, you can bring some fun and lightheartedness to just how you interact and show up in the world and interface with things, but then it’s that idea of creativity, because you’re talking about word choice and emails. I think trying to find this very small steps start somewhere kind of thing is because it could be like, okay, yeah, it’s a very transactional thing. Emailing back and forth, you might be just very short with people and just like, whatever. How about you try to be a little bit more personal and empathetic and that sort of thing. That’s a way to have little dropper, little dose of creativity.
Or it could be like, “Oh, I’m always so verbose. My emails always end up so long, whatever.” And it’s like, “Okay, you know what? Here’s my creativity.” And certainly it would be that limitation thing. It’s like, “What words could I use to get the same information across to have it be way more tight and whatever?” Because I think I’ve had that problem sometimes that either people feel like I’m being short in emails or they get lost in them because they’re needlessly long. So it’s that idea of, okay, you end up getting too much on either end of the email spectrum of it’s too short and direct with people or it’s too long and people get lost. It’s like, okay, creativity could help you get to a point where people feel like you’re respectful and you’re also being just clear and concise in communication.
So I think that’s just an interesting thing is just that reflection of either setting, “Okay, I’ve got to write every day haiku or something like that.” That sort of routine, or just giving yourself those little challenges of things that you do, things that you do or don’t do that you want to change. Whatever’s your normal, try to get and stretch your muscles out because I think that’s even a part of this for me is certainly with writing, certainly with podcasting over the years for me is like you’ve got to just keep the muscle in motion and stuff. So just opportunities to do that I think are important.
And I’ll give you just because to that other big point that I was sensing from you and I had mentioned is that idea of all of this, I think, that we were using some examples in our work life and everything, but the idea of doing creative things for their own sake and not trying to monetize everything or whatever. So I guess just any thoughts or reflections on that, because I think that could even be part of it where it could be valuable for people is to be like, “You know what, yeah, by day I am Res Life pro or whatever. I’m in the halls doing the thing. In the evenings, I want to just go do open mic comedy or be at a theater show or do whatever that is completely separate and totally unrelated.” And I didn’t even talk about anything relating to work or whatever.
So I guess just that idea of how you find opportunities to maybe nurture creativity that are personally nurturing and maybe feel, standing alone, what kind the value would be in that.
Sean Watson:
I think the, and this goes back to some of the deficit mindset stuff I was talking about earlier, I think a lot of folks automatically cut themselves off from experiences before they even get there. To the example you mentioned, I’ve had several colleagues go to classes doing stand-up comedy, and I think they articulate a little bit of professional like, “Oh, communication,” all this stuff.
I was like, “No.” You are spending your after work hours on your own learning how to do stand-up comedy. I have had a couple colleagues perform in local theater productions. I had one colleague, I think two weeks ago or two or three weeks ago, I saw her perform, and the local theater does Readers Theater Plus. And so the structure of it is you get a play, you meet as a cast and read it on a Tuesday, you meet as a cast and read it on the Saturday of the show, block it out, and then that Saturday afternoon you’re performing. And so it wasn’t a, “I am on a mainstage play and I’m in rehearsal 16 hours every week, all of these things.” There’s really low-risk spaces for people to engage in.
A couple of years ago, and I performed since then, there’s a fringe festival in my area and French festivals happen around the world, and they’re just week-long poetry, improv, visual arts, documentaries, productions, all of these, dance performances. And I submitted a performance. So I wrote a series of poems based on the major arcana of the tarot cards, and it was similar to what we were talking about in the last question. I constrained myself. I am writing something about these. And I’ve had such joy and I’m performing those poems, some similar poems again, some of them I performed the same show I think two or three times now, and I’m like, “Cool, all right, next. I’m going to keep myself going. I’m going to keep writing some of this work.” And as a PhD student, again, having some of those bounds.
But I would not have thought that I would be qualified or able to perform at an arts festival. Certainly have a creative degree, but I am not an artist by trade. I am not a professional in doing this stuff. But I said, “You know what, let them tell me now. Let me try.” And I think I did have a little bit of an in. I think universities often tend to sponsor these things. Universities also love having their staff be out and about. So I think I got my foot in the door performing in this space because of my university relations. And it is not part of my work. I do not perform poetry as an associate director in Residence Life. But I said, “Why not?” I said, “Try.”
And I think lots of spaces, whether you’re in a bigger city like Rochester or you’re in a local space there, there’s coffee shops that have open mics. Try something. And I’ve never been to an open mic or a coffee shop or someplace of performance and had someone react negatively. I think if this message of the podcast can be pushed back on the fear that, “I’m going to be disliked, I’m going to be hated,” no. This space is so welcoming and creative and nurturing, and you should join. So go say yes. Go put something in, go write something and put it out in public. There’s not going to be much harm that can happen there.
Dustin Ramsdell:
Yeah. That’s a great message because I think there’s going to be much more power, I think, with a lot of these things. A lot of them don’t require… That shouldn’t be part of your mindset of if you’re writing, you’re doing other things, it’s fine to just keep that for yourself. But I think it can be so affirmative to, “Yeah, I wrote these things. I’m going to put them out into the world,” and whatever else. So I think if somebody feels inclined towards that, I think it could be really just shot in the arm to hopefully maybe keep these endeavors going, to actually get folks’ response to it.
But I think yeah, that notion too of, yeah, so much of this, just doing it purely for yourself, separate from other aspects of your working life, and even just level setting expectations, I guess. Because being in the podcasting space, just knowing a lot of people pursue this and it’s like just know that maybe you’re in the niche of a niche of a niche or whatever. It’s never going to be like, “Oh, we’re getting millions of downloads per episode,” whatever, “biggest show in the world. We’re going to make all this money,” or whatever. It’s, again, level setting to be like, “I am doing this to have a creative outlet and to nurture that within myself, build communication skills, or maybe build a community that shares values,” or whatever. Just level set why you’re doing the thing. And that, I think, will provide much more of the internal motivation to keep at it and keep that nourishment and everything.
And I think just even the big acknowledgement of this episode of my mindset is, yeah, nurturing creativity can happen at work. And I think we gave a couple of just random examples of that. There are many, but then it’s just the idea of who you are as a human and how you bring that into your working life and stuff. Because it could be like you’re doing all this stuff completely separate, stands on its own, not trying to make a bunch of money or become a huge star or whatever. But then it’s just whatever centering that gives you and peace with the world and yourself, and also just creative thinking and all that, that will impact how you do your work and how you show up and all that sort of thing.
So I think there can be a lot of different interwoven things here and how you maybe approach it of, am I being creative in service of my job and that is the only reason why I’m doing it. It’s like that’s a little, I think, half-baked. It’s like you should have some different aspirations or motivations, whatever. But I think I’m glad that we, I felt like, covered so much ground of this synergy or how everything hopefully would maybe serve each other or do any of this creative thinking and nurturing of it and whatever endeavors and habits, whatever. I think at the end of the day to serve yourself so that maybe you can just be more, I guess, show up in a different way at work to where it doesn’t feel as though it’s maybe depriving you of things or limiting you or whatever. If it’s just like, “Okay, I’ve got a better balance of things. I can bring more of myself to my job,” or whatever else.
But I guess just as we wrap up here, I think I’m clearly processing a lot. I’m hoping that folks will keep this thinking going and conversation going and all that. So we’ll wrap up here. If you have any advice, resources, things that you want to share just to wrap up the topic or help people to keep going on this journey of nurturing their creative thinking.
Sean Watson:
So I think about because you were talking about using it to show up and how we use it as an important creative muscle. This is not new. If you think back to cave paintings, there have been artistic creative expressions before there was documented language. So this is a natural function of us as humans. And so to cut ourselves off or to limit ourselves in being able to be creative where we are essentially cutting ourselves off and limiting ourselves as our full human potential and human possibility. And so I think that one root that in my nerddom of historically, this is what being human is about and that’s what we’re here for, as I put on my both spiritual life and residence life hat.
I think some advice for things that I was thinking about and a piece that I’ve really enjoyed, again, bringing it and rooting it into a college campus, a lot of college campuses have art galleries in various spaces. I didn’t go to some of them for several years of my career. Then I’m like, “Oh, wait, nope.” I had a student who had a piece in it and I was like, “Oh, I can go experience art and I don’t have to go too far. I can walk across building or walk across campus on lunch and experience some of these pieces.” And experiencing art is also a creative act, that you’re interacting with it. So I think go check out… That’s a really low bar. Go walk across campus and see some art that is there. That has been universal of my college experiences.
One of the things that as we were talking, I typed a note from myself, “AI?” I think it’d be remiss to not talk about creativity and AI and how we use that. I am not an AI naysayer, but I think, and this is my qualitative researcher, this is my English creative writing degree, I think there is an interesting spark of what we can put forward as humans to be creative or to do things that AI ostensibly can’t do. But I have a couple of times, and I’m putting my parent hat on, I’ve asked AI to create some creative writing prompts. I’ve asked AI to give me an idea for blank, and then being able to execute it myself. And so I think there is some value in there, and AI and creativity is probably a several long dissertations that we can engage in. But I would be remiss if I didn’t engage in that way.
The things I’ve been thinking about is where I was like, “What books do I have on creativity? What works have I leaned on?” And I think you referenced them earlier in the conversation. There are so many books around creativity and innovation and rooted in workplace creativity. And so I didn’t list any of those in resources to share or things to pass forward because those are well known and out there. Some ones that I did list, and if you haven’t seen this before, do recommend. There’s several of them. Keri Smith, an artist, author person, has several books of Wreck This Journal, Destroy This Journal, ways, and each page has some different creativity thing. One page was like, “Use this paper to make some new noise,” and do that. And I bit the corner of the paper because I was like, break out of your shell, do something weird. And you can color, tear. So it’s like each page is a creative prompt that really kicks you into a new space.
And then I think finding some works that are interesting or valuable, written creatively too that I pulled out of a Pantheon. I love graphic novels, and that’s another interesting creative space that for many, many years I feel like got kind of shunted to the side, not valuable. I think there are some really interesting academic history, graphic novels. One March, and so kind of a civil rights, but it’s a three-book series, moves you through the history in a really kind of human visceral, visual way as a graphic novel. And so yeah, I think finding things that make you look at things differently is what I would recommend.
I also have, and I pulled it off my bookshelf, I have a Creative Whack Pack book set or a card set, and I quickly Googled. I was like, “creative cards”. And there are a ton of out there. And so if you’re looking for a quick prompt, and they each have, just a way to look at things differently. This one, yeah, “Ask what if. Put some magic in your thinking by asking what if questions? What if animals became more intelligent than people? What if we had mouths in our palms of our hands? What if men also had babies?” So just wild questions to get you to think weirdly as a way to shake off or shake out of where you are.
Dustin Ramsdell:
Lots of good stuff there. Really appreciate you going into all of it. And we’ll link out to everything in the show notes because some folks might want those cards that could be just good for you to do with your partner or your family or your team or your friends or whatever, just as fun prompts and stuff.
And then what was hitting with me is I think that idea of being like, “Oh yeah, I like graphic novels or this or that.” I think people might be like, “Yeah, I love movies, TV, books, graphic novels, comic books,” or, “I love going out to theater,” or this or that, “or seeing live performance and stuff.” I think my advice, just as you’re saying all that you did and just making some kind of mentions there, is the idea of I think having these prompts and exposure to things that spur you to think differently, part of that can just be exposures to different cultures or a different creator, a person who is presenting things from a very different life experience or whatever else.
And maybe using whatever kind of medium that you might most prefer, whatever. Because it could be like, “Okay, yeah, I’m going to watch a movie from a director or somebody that just I’ve never had exposure to or from another country.” And it’s just that idea of that idea of just a prompt is some sort of catalyst that can get you moving. And whether that is maybe just a brief meditation that you do, you’re maybe doing the journaling or doing some sort of activity or whatever else, just having that little dose every day. Or maybe it’s something, it’s more substantial.
And I think, yeah, even with what you mentioned, that AI, I think, is in a powerful place to be that catalyst of just like, “Hey,” because I say for me, my most routine use and valuable use of AI right now, it’s just like, “Give me five or 10 podcast episode title options.” And usually I end up blurring together a bunch of what it gave, but it is an idea of just give me something to start off with because otherwise, I usually end up just very generic and probably super similar where it’s always just talk about this thing with this person, whatever. But it’s like, right, you want it to be obviously for any of this stuff. Acknowledging that, again, the opportunity and the sandbox to play in is we’re obviously all the washing content, you’ve got to have the stuff that’s going to be grabby and catching people and treating their curiosity. So having titles that are going to be facilitating that sort of thing, and just having a tool that helps to support that.
And again, AI is a tool, as is all the different resources and things that you mentioned, tools that help to nurture this and bring it to our personal endeavors, work lives, whatever it might be. But just appreciate you so much, your perspective, all that you shared, all that you do, and all ways to connect with you in the show notes as usual. But just thanks so much for being part of the blogging team, for coming back to the podcast, and for hanging out for this episode.
Sean Watson:
Always love talking, always love connecting. And if folks want, if they’re listening or like, “Oh, I want to ask or connect,” or other ways be tied to me, I love reaching out. I love connecting.
