Why My Art Degree Isn't Worthless Like Everybody Thinks

Since Monday was a holiday, I know I should be posting a challenge up today, but I really needed to write this blog post for multiple personal reasons today, so this is what you get.  Lucky you.

Don’t mind me while I climb up onto my soapbox….

Maybe it was Kate's "Fight For Art" post, or maybe I've just had about as much crap as I can take this week; either way I have pretty much had it up to here (imagine a hand to eyeballs motion there) with the number of blog posts and newspaper articles circulating right now about the arts and creative fields being one of the top 5-10 most useless degrees at college to study. According to HERE, HERE, HERE and HERE and HERE and probably a hundred more places I didn't link to, the message I am getting from society is basically this:

"Don’t study art, it’s worthless; spend your time learning more important things, things that will make you lots of money."

 

First of all, you basically just told me that you think my degree is worthless… thanks.

Also, you are making the assumption that the value of my degree and the education I received is proportionate to the salary I will be making after graduation.   I can see how this may seem logical to you, but the two really have nothing at all to do with one another and I’d appreciate you not confusing the two.

Furthermore, (such a great word, don’t you agree?) I’d like to see you try and make it through your first semester of art school and see if you don’t change your tune.

I am sick of art students being painted as this lazy bunch of college students who just wanted to avoid taking math classes and sit around all day gluing together pipe cleaners and playing with paint.

I don’t know how intense your accounting class was, but has anyone ever broken down in tears crying in the middle of class because their work didn’t meet the standards expected of them?  Have you ever been graded on something you can’t simply study for or learn out of a text book? Have you had to create work without any guidelines or rules or knowledge of on what criteria you are being graded and judged?  Have you ever had a teacher hate your work because they didn’t like the color orange?

Listen people, every degree is hard. I’m not saying the fine arts are worse; I’m just trying to make the point that it’s not all sunshine, butterflies and flowers for us.  Which brings me to the point of this rant.

Why I think fine art degrees are so important and shouldn’t simply be passed over as some sort of third-rate, lazy-ass, worthless degree:

1) Art school fosters 
higher levels of creative 
thinking abilities.

This is the obvious one.  But in this day and age creative out of the box thinking is what is moving our country forward.  Art students understand that to get a result you have never gotten you have to go somewhere you haven’t been before.  That is the only way to move any industry forward.  Creative, innovative minds are what push our society into the future, and I don’t think it’s asking too much to assign a little bit of value to that role.

2) Art school teaches you 
how to embrace and handle 
feedback (good and bad).

Putting yourself out there in the world is difficult, but it’s even more scary if you’ve never had any experience opening yourself up to critique like that before.  If art school knows how to do anything well, it knows how to beat the crap out of your emotions until you grow a thicker set of skin and learn how to embrace the feedback, accept it with grace, process it, and grow from the experience instead of simply being traumatized by it.

3) Art students know how 
to push through the crap 
to get to the gold.

Every art student, no matter what year of school they are in, understands the value of pushing past the initial surface of an idea and digging down deeper to the root of the thought.  They know that the first several sketches of an idea are never going to be the best, so they keep pushing, keep digging further and further until they have expelled the obvious and are left with the essence.  

4) Art students understand 
the cost of business.

While you were busy drinking with your buddies at the bar in college, just about every art student was home eating Top Ramen noodles, or not eating at all.  Why?  Because we spent all our money on the art supplies we needed to complete a project to get a grade to pass a test so that we could graduate.  They didn’t just come free with the price of tuition.  Did your free history tests teach you about how much it costs to operate a business?  Did you have to learn how to budget for a project and work within that set budget to complete a project to the best of your ability?  Then when it’s all said and done did you have to sit down and figure out how much to price your work at so it would cover your time, labor, and cost of materials?  Probably not.

5) Art students understand 
how to present themselves 
and their ideas.

If you were one of those kids who liked to sit in the back of classes, blend in and hope that the teacher never noticed you existed… you probably didn’t go to art school.  For one, most art classes rarely ever had a “back of the room,” we were always sitting in little circles for some reason.  Secondly, if you DID manage to sit in the back of class, you were going to have to stand up and present every piece you made during the semester in front of all of us at some point, so going unnoticed would pretty much be impossible.  Art students become masters of the presentation.  You have to know how to get up there and quickly and professionally present what you did, why you did it and why you think it’s important.  That takes practice and art students get it by the bucket loads.

6) Art school teaches you 
to have an opinion and to 
be passionate about it.

It is impossible to go through art school without learning to form passionate opinions on one thing or another, it’s how we create art.  Every piece you make has to come from somewhere, and even if you go into a project just so-so on an idea, the amount of time you have to spend shaping the piece and putting it together automatically grows a strong bond between you and the subject matter.  Art is all about shedding light onto things that we as a society are intrigued by, want to understand or investigate.  Art school forces artists to think critically about the world around them and form passionate opinions about how their work can speak to those issues and bring about change or understanding to the world through them.

7) Art school teaches you 
that not everyone will like 
your work - and that’s ok.

The world isn’t like a biology test, there isn’t typically one right answer and then a bunch of wrong answers, it’s more just a mess of muddy grey.  Sometimes people will love what you do, and then other people will hate that very same thing.  Art school makes you very aware of this fact early on and teaches you that no matter how talented you are, there is always going to be at least one person out there who hates what you do.  You can’t change their minds, you just have to learn to ignore them and keep working.

8) Art school teaches 
you good work ethic.

It is impossible to just show up on test days for art school.  You are either there every day working in class (and out of class for hours on end usually), or you don’t have a finished piece to turn in on critique day.  If you do decide to slack off and skip class and not work at home and turn in some crappy half ass project, you then have the consequence of having to stand up in front of all your peers and show it off,  you can’t just quietly hand in a test paper to the teacher.   I pulled more all-nighters trying working on art pieces than I ever did studying for exams.

9) Art school takes 
theory into reality.

Most degree programs can talk theoretically practically for their entire programs, art school immediately takes you from theoretical to practical application.   You can’t just be an armchair creative in art school, you are forced to actually live your craft, discover exactly what it means to you, and carve out your own unique voice.  The irony of art school is that no one can really teach you how to make art, it is something you have to discover for yourself.   It can teach you the techniques and the classical ideas, but it is up to you to take those tools and figure how to use them in your own unique way, no one can do it for you.

10) Art students are 
masters of failure.

Nobody wants to fail - in fact, in most degree tracks you are strongly encouraged not to.  Students are told to get straight A’s and 4.0 GPA’s so that they will look great for the future.  But As and 4.0 GPAs don’t teach us a damn thing about failure.  Art on the other hand is all about failure.  No artist has ever made anything without first failing miserably at it, getting back up again and trying it once more, and sometimes a thousand more times until their piece finally comes together and works.  As human beings it is impossible for us to grow without learning how to fail, because it is only through failure that we can truly test the boundaries around us and push them.  Playing it safe never got anybody very far, and those who are afraid to fail are not going to have the courage to push our society toward greater things.

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So if I'm a boss, looking to hire a new employee, do I want someone who sat in the back of class, followed the leader, did what they were told, got decent grades and that's about it… 

Or do I want someone who has highly attuned abilities for creative and critical thinking, knows how to form an opinion and professionally present it to a group of people, clearly outlining why their idea is important.  Someone who can handle any feedback you throw at them, can keep pushing a concept past the ordinary into the extraordinary, but understand the costs behind the project as well.  Someone who understands not just how something would work in theory, but how it would work in the real world and isn't afraid of hard work. And most importantly someone who isn't afraid to put their ideas out there and possibly fail because it's so new and different and innovative?

If you ask me… creative studies students don't sound half bad. 

But what do I know, I graduated with an art degree.

It Takes Two (AKA How To Be Married To An Artist)

Christo + Jeanne Claude

Frida Kahlo + Diego Rivera

Georgia O'Keeffe + Alfred Stieglitz

Being married to a creative person isn't easy.   Our emotions tend to run close to the surface, we collect strange objects that we tell our spouses will "one day" come in handy for a project we're sure, and we spend ridiculous amounts of time and energy working on projects until they are just right, only to then turn around and tear the entire thing apart and start over because we just weren't "feeling it." 

We study hard to fine tune our craft and work for months or years on end to get into the public eye, and then once our big moment is upon us are utterly terrified of anyone seeing our work.  

Not only do we need a partner who can encourage us to keep going when the road seems to all but have vanished before us,  we also need someone who can be there to tell us when we are straying off course and losing sight of what is really important.

But mostly we need a partner who pushes us to be better, to take risks, and to dig deeper.

I'm not quite sure my husband knew what he was getting into when we got married.

Sure he thought, "Oh, she's so creative," but I'm pretty sure he thought that would translate as "Oh, she'll have good taste in decorating", or "Free art for the walls, score." Not, "Dear God, it's 3am and she still hasn't gone to bed because she's having a panic over her show and almost threw all the work out the window because she is having last minute doubts about her talent," or, "You want me to do what while you photograph me for your project!?"

But over the years he's adapted and gotten pretty damn good at it.  I mean now he hardly bats an eye when I ask him to photograph me stuffed in an old trunk holding a tiny candle and hiding my face.  Or tied up from head to toe in an old abandoned building.  (Which worked great until the cops showed up because someone had seen us and reported that a man had kidnapped me and tied me up and was photographing me…)

And in that time I've learned a couple things about being a good creative partner from him.

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1) A good partner makes you do your own work.

You know back in school when they made you do those terrible group projects and one person always just took over and pretty much did the entire thing while the other people in the group just sat around twiddling their thumbs and throwing paper airplanes at each other?  That's not what we're looking for.  A good partner doesn't just do the work for you, they come along side you, encourage you, but make you do your own god damn work.  Every creative needs to struggle a little in their work, it's what tells us that the work is worth doing.  If it was easy everyone would be making it.  The struggle lets us know we are on the right path.  If your partner comes along and makes the road too easy because they think they are trying to help us, they can really keep us from forming the passion and connection to our work that we can only gain through the struggle.

2) A good partner believes in you 
more than you do in yourself.

The honest truth is that almost 99% of creatives never really feel talented or good at what they do.  Most of us are self-conscious, and constantly doubting our skills and talents.  A good partner can see through all that.  They can see the talent we are afraid to show off, and they can help us see it as well by pushing us towards situations or people that will be able to reflect it back to us.

For example, my husband once sent an anonymous email to a major art publication saying he had come across this great young artist that he thought they should take a look at.  A week later I got an email saying they were going to run a 5 page article on me.

3) A good partner can keep calm 
and problem solve.

During almost every creative project something always goes horribly wrong.  It's just fact.  At that moment, while I'm running around having a panic attack because I think my creative career is ruined and that I'll never work ever again, my husband is quietly sitting in the corner making a plan.  It never fails.  I freak out and he calmly saunters in, breaks down the problem and offers a list of possible solutions that I couldn't see because I was too busy freaking out.

4) A good partner takes you seriously 
when nobody else will.

One of the things I love most about my husband is that he has always taken me and the work I do seriously.  As a creative people we are belittled right and left as we go through life. People say things like, "Do you actually make any money doing that?" or, "You just sit around and play with crayons all day, why don't you go and find a real job?"  A good partner doesn't see your work as frivolous or silly, they can see the importance that it has to you and take it as seriously as you do without jokes or laughter or belittlement.  They would never tell you to go get a "real job," because they know you already have one.

5) A good partner cares more about you 
than about your work.

It's easy to get lost in a project and lose your bearings in life.  You forget to eat, you stop sleeping as much as you should, and bathing becomes very low on your list of things to do.  A project can also consume you to the point that your mood changes, and you start acting like someone you're not.  The project can become so important that nothing else matters.  But a good partner never looses track of you, the you that you are supposed to be.  And they care more about making sure that you are happy and healthy than about the well being of your project.  They can see where passion has stopped and obsession has set in and know when to intervene to keep you safe physically and mentally.

I think I'll keep him :)

Challenge #20: Get In A Fight!

First, a little fictitious artistic difference, to set the tone.



Now let's get down to business:

Alice Stewart was a brilliant, hardworking and enthusiastic doctor working in the 1950s, but in order to gain recognition in the scientific community, she needed to solve a major problem plaguing humanity. Her research led to the discovery that x-rays during pregnancy were to blame for the rising rate of children's deaths from cancer. Except . . . people were really, really, reluctant to believe her.

Margaret Heffernan breaks it down in her TED talk:

Now that finding flew in the face of conventional wisdom. Conventional wisdom held that everything was safe up to a point, a threshold. It flew in the face of conventional wisdom, which was huge enthusiasm for the cool new technology of that age, which was the X-ray machine. And it flew in the face of doctors' idea of themselves, which was as people who helped patients, they didn't harm them.

In the face of all that "conventional wisdom," Dr. Stewart found the courage to stick to her guns and to her findings -- and eventually, her research was accepted and the practice of giving pregnant women x-rays ceased. But what about at the beginning? When everyone else said differently, how could she be so sure she was right?

Take it away, Margaret Heffernan:



Here's the key moment (for the purposes of this post, at least):

So, how did she know that she was right? Well, she had a fantastic model for thinking. She worked with a statistician named George Kneale, and George was pretty much everything that Alice wasn't. So, Alice was very outgoing and sociable, and George was a recluse. Alice was very warm, very empathetic with her patients. George frankly preferred numbers to people. But he said this fantastic thing about their working relationship. He said, "My job is to prove Dr. Stewart wrong." He actively sought disconfirmation. Different ways of looking at her models, at her statistics, different ways of crunching the data in order to disprove her. He saw his job as creating conflict around her theories. Because it was only by not being able to prove that she was wrong, that George could give Alice the confidence she needed to know that she was right.  

It's a fantastic model of collaboration -- thinking partners who aren't echo chambers. I wonder how many of us have, or dare to have, such collaborators. Alice and George were very good at conflict. They saw it as thinking. 

BAM.

When I heard this talk on the TED Radio Hour this Sunday, I got super excited. I mean, think about it: when have you done your very best work? Was it when everything came easily, when you had a supportive and uncritical audience, and the result you arrived at was basically the same thing you imagined at the start? Probably not.

Technically, of course, the critique and revision process isn't really like "getting in a fight." But it can feel that way -- the further from your own ideas and aesthetics this other person falls, the more likely you feel nervous about exposing your work to their criticism. It seems like such a huge risk -- what if they don't like it? What if they think it's stupid?

The truth is, no matter what field you're in, you're going to experience that kind of negative criticism. But there are also people who can challenge your ideas with positive criticism, people who come at things from an entirely different perspective, who will push you to make better work. Those people are your key to unlocking the next level in your practice.

Therefore, this week we challenge you to Get In A Fight. Go find something - whether a piece of work, or a belief you hold, or an idea you have, or a plan you've made -- and then go find someone that will force you to defend it. Maybe you'll discover something new you hadn't considered before. Maybe you'll change your mind entirely, and have to start from scratch, but that new foundation will be ten times stronger than the old one.

As Margaret Heffernan says,

When we dare to see, and we create conflict, we enable ourselves and the people around us to do our very best thinking.

Now that sounds like a plan.
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Don't forget this week's Challenge Badge!

I made it using this super nifty pre-scrubbed version and font pack from GlenMerden.com (just imagine the possibilities!)

We'll be looking for people rocking it this week -- and be sure to let us know what you learned from seeking out conflict in the comments below.