Louise Lu
Women In The Creative Process 9/25
Professor Mary Buckley

Before I can answer the question of the prompt “what is something you discovered about yourself after taking Twyla Tharp's self-assessment,” I have some questions for Twyla Tharp: why do you believe that these 33 questions can make a cut-off conclusion about a person’s career life in arts? Why is there a need of test like fortune-telling that may discourage people with a variety of dreams from trying a variety of things? Why are you trying so hard to categorize people as “the right material” and “the wrong material” for a certain form of art? Does it even matter if a writer (defined by your judgment) wants to be a painter? Now I can answer the question of the prompt: from this assessment, I did not discover any new me other than the old me I already know. One of the reasons why I did not gain anything brilliant is that I really had no answer for more than half of the questions. I cannot remember my “first creative moment”, I do not really record down how I “begin [my] day”, and I do not know what my “greatest fear” is. Many of the questions can finally put me into refinement, or shape me into a person that I am not associated with. People want to come up with answers for these questions to know themselves, or their DNA, better, but 99% of the time they get more confused after they get the results. Many of his theories are lack of ethos. What supports his saying that “a young man with painting in his genes would be rattling off colors immediately”? How come this poor young man fall in the range of “DNA denial” simply by blurting the word “blue” out when describing colors? Probably many art students find the assessment helpful in discovering their “true DNA” of art, as they are so eager to find the “right” ways to continue their art career. This is not my case. As a student just crawling through the entrance courses of civil engineering, I am not sure if I will finally graduate with a degree in civil engineering, and I have never been told for sure that there is engineering