Prompt: People generally prefer originality to imitation, which is often considered inferior and second-rate. However, we have learned most of what we know by imitating others. Mastering any skill or gaining any knowledge means that we must learn from those who have gone before us. In fact, it is not until we have imitated others and learned from them what there is to know that we can strike out on our own and maybe create something new.
Assignment: Is it necessary for people to imitate others before they can become original and creative?
If you have no knowledge about something but you want to learn it, how would you do so? All your life you're learning from someone whether it's in school or at home, or others, so there are many ways to be original and creative, and one of those ways is imitation.
Most artists learn drawing from others, for example, they go to an arts school in which teachers teach them how to draw circles, arcs, cylinders, human body, and others. Consequently, when these artists learn all these stuff, and get the "hang" of it, they start doing their own way of drawing, they create their own style that only him or her can do. Eventually, those artists would draw something new or beautiful. But for imitating others, artists would've not found their own style to creativity.
In addition to artists, scientists often start through admiring one or more of the subjects at school, like physics, chemistry, or biology; consequently, they start learning or doing exactly what the teacher told him or her to do. For example, the teacher would say "put chemical A into chemical B and observe the reaction" and the students would do so; therefore, when some of those students grow up, they start adding chemicals themselves to try and find something new, experiment in physics fields trying to find a new theory for something, and observe on biological creatures to see how they act on their natural habitat. But for doing what they're told at first, scientists would've not found new chemicals or theories,
After careful analysis of examples such as artists imitating their teachers until, eventually, start creating their own style or scientists who do what they're told until they become major scientists in a specific field. It is clear that imitation leads to creativity and originality.