Paper Chains - Creativity in Captivity

A laminated drawing of a rainbow hangs in my father’s old shop, a remnant of my four-year-old self. Having just developed some motor skills, my parents thought it would be appropriate to display my work where every customer coming into the store could see it. It was one of my earliest memories of creativity. My parents encouraged me to explore art in all forms—visual arts, drama, dance, music. I wasn’t exceptional in every area, but expressing myself always felt natural. Holding a paintbrush or even a pencil gave me a thrill as I splashed colour and swirls onto paper, free and unpredictable. But soon, I was redirected to science and math. While I grew to enjoy science, it never matched the joy of creating.

As I grew older, I gradually quit each artistic pursuit—first dance, then music, then drama—until only visual arts remained. I couldn’t abandon it entirely; art still felt like a part of me. Yet, I lost countless hours I could’ve spent refining my skills to assignments and studies for "more important" subjects. The unspoken rule was clear: academic success was the path to stability, while creativity was a distraction. This was my introduction to the rules of structured learning. A career in the arts was hardly practical in a world that valued high-paying professions.

Books became my refuge. While friends played outside, I spent hours with my grandparents' classics and colourful stories that whisked me away from reality. Stories became my solace, a quiet rebellion against a world that prized conformity over exploration. Weekly library trips where I would finish 10-15 stories at a time sustained my love for reading, though eventually, academic demands took over, and my reading habit dwindled to almost nothing. In another life, maybe I would’ve pursued literature or creative writing.

My passion for creativity set me apart in school, where teachers saw value in memorisation, not originality. My doodles in the margins of assignments were seen as distractions rather than expressions. My ideas were often stifled, pushed back into the boundaries of formulaic responses, clear-cut answers, and assignments devoid of any room for personal expression. Academic structures prioritised rigid, repetitive learning, leaving little room for genuine exploration. How could teachers celebrate creativity in one moment and demand memorised facts in the next? Knowledge has been spooned down out throats and once it’s been vomited back out, we are given gold stars having actually retained nothing. It can only be truly acquired when it wants to be. True learning, can’t be captured in neat rows of scantron bubbles. It is messy, wandering, and often fails to meet predefined standards, far beyond the limits of a standardised test. Yet this is the learning that schools refuse to acknowledge.

As my creative dreams faded, I conformed to academic expectations, submitting papers that echoed back exactly what my teachers wanted to hear. I threw myself into my work. Performance was demanded and so, I performed. The papers that I turned in were bland and impersonal that echoed what people wanted to hear. You could write your name in the corner of the paper, but if you couldn’t regurgitate other’s ideas, then you didn’t have the luxury of expressing your own. This obedience was the downfall. My high school years were a blur of achieving good grades and high scores, all geared toward securing a prestigious university spot. There was no room to explore the world, to marvel at masterpieces like the Sistine Chapel or the Mona Lisa; those were indulgences that didn’t align with academic "success."

At university, I finally had the freedom to choose, but practicality led me to medicine instead of art. I couldn’t envision a career in a field that was underfunded and undervalued. Sure, you could succeed if you were deemed as ‘good’, but how could I be good at something that I had no practice in. Art and creativity, despite being core to human expression, seemed out of place in a modern education system that celebrated formulas over imagination. We’re praised for "thinking outside the box" only when it aligns neatly with the criteria of a rubric. Original thought was praised in theory but suppressed in practice, leaving students like me skilled only in parroting information.

Creativity will survive. It’s like a flame enduring a windstorm, surviving in brief flickers before being surpassed again. It exists between the lines, finding life in moments we carve out for ourselves, outside the reach of rubrics and grades. I ate what the spoons fed me, and when they turned away, I went back to tending my little flame. I’ve found solace in writing now, where I can express my opinions with the written word with a touch of flare that doesn’t care for opinions. I don’t write for approval or a grade now, but for myself. My name is no longer something I hide on a page, fearful of critique. It is my declaration that, despite everything, I am still here—still writing, still creating. And that, I think, is the greatest act of rebellion I can offer.