It’s that time of year again. The newest crop of talent from Imperial College’s Environmental Technology MSc have handed in their thesis projects and are ready to graduate. To celebrate their freedom and to learn about their recent thesis projects, we dedicated this month’s 6heads gathering to our class of 2013 members.

We also had the sneaky ulterior motive of getting each of them to write a blog summarizing their thesis – the last thing they want to do after three months of writing about it full-time! So, to make it as painless as possible for them, and to inject creativity and some of the story telling lessons learnt from our event back in September, we all participated in a five-minute, speed, blog writing exercise. This meant each of us writing a succinct piece on our thesis, using Pixar’s take on the elevator pitch as a framework. The Pixar pitch works like this:

Once upon a time___________. Every day___________. One day___________. Because of that___________. Because of that___________. Until finally___________.

This is put into practice in this Finding Nemo pitch quoted on the Forbes website:
Once upon a time there was a widowed fish named Marlin who was extremely protective of his only son, Nemo. Every day, Marlin warned Nemo of the ocean’s dangers and implored him not to swim far away. One day in an act of defiance, Nemo ignores his father’s warnings and swims into open water. Because of that, he is captured by a diver and ends up as a pet in the fish tank of a dentist. Because of that, Marlin sets off on a journey to recover Nemo… Until finally Marlin and Nemo find each other, reunite, and learn that love depends on trust. 

The resulting blogs gave us a brilliant top-level insight into their fascinating projects and a lot of laughs – we have some talented story writers in our midst. Everyday this week a class of 2013 6header will debut their thesis story for you. Introducing:

– Monday, Hyojoo Kim

– Tuesday, Amelia Womack

– Wednesday, Arpita Raksit

– Thursday, Tom Lorber

– Friday, Andrew Black