This degree was therapy, self-actualization, and spiritual expansion all in one.
Plenty of people who dream of a life in the creative arts forego formal education because it has a reputation for being restrictive. It can be difficult to maintain true authenticity while also striving for the highest possible letter grades. For most of us, the greatest lessons are learned in private, when the world has faded to dark obscurity. In that void, we teach ourselves, and usually there is no better tutor.
When I was seventeen, I applied for an undergraduate degree for two main reasons: it was expected of me, and I wasn’t certain of my next step. I loved writing, acting, and filmmaking, but at the time, I didn’t see a clear path forward for either of them. University promised clarity through mentorship, and being a lost little teenager, I craved that kind of direction.
In high school, I found myself disheartened by my educators. While a select few approached the classroom with enthusiasm, passion, and commitment, the grand majority just looked exhausted. Tasked with babysitting above all else, even those with creative concentrations were more apt to assign busywork than genuinely helpful, growth-inspiring projects. I can’t even blame them; each class was a toss-up. They might receive thirty curious, respectful adolescents eager to learn, or three dozen menaces hurling balls of crumpled loose leaf across the room.
I’d always been one of two or three students who actually engaged with the material in my english and science classes. I willingly wrote far more than expected, and handed in my work practically dreaming of the teacher’s feedback. Some responded with eye-rolls, disgruntled by the idea of grading more than they’d expected to from an overzealous fifteen year old. However, some made an impact bigger than they could have imagined.
I’ll never forget the english teacher who told me I’d be an author someday, and the chemistry teacher who went out of his way to grade my lab work like a sci-fi novel. The english teacher saw how much I loved the craft, and spent extra time evaluating my assignments to provide the best possible advice. She fancied herself my editor, and ensured I left her classroom feeling like a budding writer every day.
The chemistry teacher effortlessly explained the way his subject could inform my writing, and encouraged me to be creative even in the most technical areas of his class. In the margins of my lab write-ups, he’d compliment my mastery of grammar and syntax, and leave little arrows pointing to things I should use in a science fiction story. He even asked me to write one, not for any grade, but merely because he wanted to ensure I was writing. These two people set the stage for an unfettered belief that my dreams could come true. They believed in me, and they made that belief known. Some teachers don’t realize how priceless this can be. Some have no concept of how their guidance, during such fragile and developmental years, can change the course of a student’s entire life.
Despite my adoration for english and science, I was far from a perfect student. In my math and history classes, I may as well have been absent, because here I was guilty of being a little bit of a menace. I wasn’t causing trouble, but I was writing about sci-fi, fantasy, and fanfiction in the margins of my worksheets. Some instructors would attempt to reel me back in, but none took the kind of interest my chemistry teacher did. Instead of trying to relate their subjects to my area of interest, most of them just frustratedly urged me to pay better attention and attend tutoring.
All of that said, I was cautiously optimistic about university. I didn’t want another class filled with dispassionate students and a jaded instructor struggling to stay awake at 9 AM. I also didn’t want a repeat of math and history, where I’d be bombarded with information of little interest and challenged with how convincingly I could fake attentiveness while my mind was on another planet.
In university, I hoped to find mentors as enthusiastic about art as me, eager to help me find my way into a future worth smiling about. I yearned for a community to bloom alongside, to feel like I belonged somewhere. Unlike high school, university would cost thousands of dollars, so it wasn’t an easy risk to take. Looking back, I’m grateful I took it.
Through my art degree, I learned about life, freedom, and what it means to be an authentic human in my work and beyond. Almost every lesson expanded outside the crafts they were intended for, because to explore art is to explore the self. In a lot of ways, my acting workshops and writing lectures were more effective than therapy ever was. This program gave me something no other could. It gave me a safe, stable, and supportive place to self-actualize.
It didn’t just teach me to make art; it taught me to make life a work of art.
Why Art Degrees Are Different
Most university’s exhaust their marketing funds on commercials that sell their ability to cultivate droves of career-ready worker bees in just four years. They promise their students stable employment, and promise employers well-prepared recruits.
In the mandatory non-artistic courses I was forced to enroll in, I witnessed this cultivation process firsthand. Though they were well-intentioned, the professors implemented a largely call-and-response approach to their lessons. They’d teach, open surface-level discussion, then remind us of the upcoming multiple-choice exam. Memorization, direction-following, and willingness to obey orders were the name of the game.
I can understand why these skills are important in highly-technical career fields. In paths like medicine, law, and engineering, it is imperative that students learn the trusted fundamentals before exploring their own creative ideas. Still, I couldn’t help but be a little off put by the unnerving lack of inspiration.
Art classes are simply built different.
Whether someone is artistic or not, I feel they should embark on at least one creative journey. Every art-based class I attended was far more than just a class. These were experiences. In place of multiple choice exams and bleary-eyed lectures, there were only blank pages and open air to be filled with discussion. The professors struck a perfect balance between offering actionable guidance and wisdom, and letting students make crucial discoveries on their own.
My Acting Courses
In acting courses, professors would joyously share methods and techniques that inspired them. They would recommend readings about master teachers, but assignments on them were seldom memorization-based. Instead, they prompted us to reflect on and respond to the teachings with the most profound effect on our spirit. This was a fantastic way to depart from the nauseatingly robotic systems imposed by other subjects.
In workshops, we were asked to forego all directions and expectations. Instead, we’d dance to the flowing beat of our own hearts. We’d embrace the beauty of imperfection, the value of mistake-making, and the chaotic truth that underscores existence itself.
There is no one way to do anything. There is no sacred path of unwavering rightness, and no pristinely polished means of putting on a performance. It’s all about living in, cherishing, and celebrating the ways we show up in gorgeously unrefined splendor.
Life is what one makes it, so acting studios were spaces of boundless, borderline unhinged freedom. They were empty rooms lined with black, white or beige wallpaper, and it was up to the students to make the space. It could be a star cruiser, a cabin in the woods, a corporate office building, a penthouse. It could be a war front in the 1900s, a department store in the distant future, and so much more.
Even with scripts and lines to guide us, acting workshops were all about uncovering personal approaches to words spoken by hundreds of other people. Sometimes, the entire group would be assigned to the same monologue, yet it was up to each individual actor to interpret and perform in their own way.
Lessons in acting were lessons in life. They were daring explorations of my own human avatar, from the cyclic lilts in my voice to the habitual movements of my hands. I was invited to look more closely at my psyche, my memories, and the manifestation of my emotions. Of course, this was often done to help me bond more intimately with a character, but as a byproduct, I bonded more intimately with myself.
I also learned to revel in my authentic, strange, one-of-a-kind approach to the world. It’s easy to get lost in the crowd sometimes, to feel like a number carrying out the same mundane patterns as all those before. Here, I learned how to see and amplify all the ways I — in a state of fearless individuality — can break the mold, because molds are simply no fun.
My Writing Courses
In writing courses, I had a similar experience. We’d read wildly successful, delightfully odd, vastly different stories from every corner of the literary world. Professors would watch with eager eyes, waiting for a student to have an ah-ha! moment. The works we engaged with were not meant to provide a set of rules to follow. They were gateways into the imagination, permission slips to make our own rules and learn how to break them.
In workshops, the universe opened up like a gunmetal gray cumulonimbus cloud. There were no wrong answers and no right answers. There was only writing, writing, and more writing. Ideas, ideas, and more ideas.
Exploration, innovation, and experimentation were crucial. Like acting performances and pieces of visual art, writing is a creature that keeps on evolving. I had professors who refused to hand out final grades, because they firmly believed no work of writing can ever truly be finished. In their opinion, there would always be room to grow, to make a piece truer to the self of today.
As you can imagine, these lessons had a profound impact on my concept of self. Like my writing pieces, I was an ever-evolving amalgamation of thoughts, feelings, and words. I was a canvas eager to be written on, then backspaced to oblivion for the rush of starting anew. My writing courses taught me that no story is ever really over, and no problem is ever really permanent. Anything can be edited, and there are always an infinite number of potential paths in the plot. There are an infinite number of happy endings.
Writing classes taught me to imagine and create with reckless abandon, and to dissolve all limitations. No matter how solid and stalwart it might seem, there is not a single wall that cannot be torn down. If you open your heart to all of the clever routes heroes can take on their journeys, you’ll begin to see the same open up in your own life. If you trust in the power of a novel’s mind-bending plot twist, you’ll attune your vision to miracles in the real world.
My Film Courses
The third and final artistic path I explored in college was film. This one was particularly interesting, because unlike acting and writing, it required working knowledge of many technical concepts. Acting and writing “rules” were always optional, but in film, the framework behind the art form was mandatory.
I learned about cameras, equipment, editing softwares, and how — in a very unglamorous way — mind pictures turn to screen pictures. I memorized numbers, names, safety protocols, and enough unique jargon to fill a dictionary and a half. The call-and-response, multiple choice system came back with a vengeance that inevitably left me feeling disenchanted.
Still, I’m grateful that I chose to check it out, because this series of courses showed me how to properly marry technical prowess with creative thinking. Film might require a lot of rigidity, but the heart of cinema lies in the same place all art does: the human imagination.
Life on this third-dimensional plane requires a steady balance of structure and chaos, systematic channels and the free-flowing energy that runs throughout them. Where acting and writing gifted me the power of entropy, film offered advice on how to hone that entropy into a foundation upon which I could build my experience of reality.
Movies that take us to the edge of the universe came to fruition because a team of skillful people knew how to filter the imagination’s maelstrom of magnificence into something perceivable in a theater’s projector screen. Without order, chaos would only ever be chaos. With order, it can be broken down into streams of life to be experienced and enjoyed, even if only for a few ephemeral moments in infinity.
Comments