This one’s for you.
This one’s for the third-year dancer who dreams of creating their own interactive and controversial dance work but receives constant questions like, “do they actually have dance as a university subject?”.
For the third-year musician who’s swimming in band gigs, music theory classes, school concerts and more, but constantly being told, “you’ll never be financially stable off your guitar alone”.
For the first-year theater student juggling production classes, rehearsals, conceptualizing and creating a one person show for York’s playGround festival and making half a set in their spare time, but hearing “they’ll never be famous so what’s the point of drama as a major”.
For the visual artists, the film students, the graphic designers, and every other fine arts student who has been made to feel like their degree is pointless or they’re not worth it.
You have three choices on how to respond when someone criticizes your degree:
Listen to them.
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Maybe you don’t think you’re good enough. Maybe you came all this way and now you’re feeling like you have no idea why you spent money and effort on this degree. Maybe you actually hate it. Maybe it is useless to you. Maybe, maybe, maybe. You always have the option to get out of it and for some people, that is the best course of action. There might be something else you excel at or something that is more suited to the life you dream of and the things you want to achieve. No one’s shaming that choice. No one’s calling you a quitter here. Do what you have to.
BUT if you’re passionate about your art form and the reason you’re listening is because you don’t know how you’ll ever get a job or you’re just stressed because the degree is more work than you thought it would be, then pull up your socks and stick it out. Really dive into the opportunities in your school’s arts community. Make some friends. Look into all the jobs that would be available to you as someone with a fine arts degree (I’ll let you in on a secret: there’s a lot).
Don’t listen to them.
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Ignore every word. Remember you are awesome and talented and you made it to university for the thing that you love. Don’t let them take away your excitement or your passion. Don’t let them make you feel inadequate or bully you. Don’t let them slander your wondrous degree or diminish the positive feelings you have for it.
Educate them.
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The most common criticisms about fine arts degrees might have merit but, upon deeper research, are still incorrect, like the following:
Myth: “Fine arts degrees are a joke,” and “your degree is easy — you probably don’t even have tests/reading/etc.” Fact: Fine arts bachelor’s degrees are hard. They require a lot of work, multiple intelligences, dedication, motivation and passion. Just getting into a fine arts program is hard, let alone doing well and completing one. They incorporate all of the difficult parts of more “academic” degrees, such as reading, testing and critical thinking. On top of that? They include evaluation on your own vulnerable and possibly abstract work, such as your body or the art you make. At York University, fine arts programs warn incoming students of their intensive nature, require full-time studies, and allow students to be in excess of a full credit load (30 credits in a year). This is not common for all programs, and to give some perspective for those who don’t understand how it’s so significant: engineering and Schulich students are also expected to follow this criteria. Fine arts programs are not easy.
Myth: “You’ll never get a job,” or “you’ll never make any money.” Fact: There are actually many internships and network opportunities for fine arts majors that can lead to well-paid jobs. There are also many extensions to other job fields that require or prefer someone with extensive background in the fine arts. The common assumption is that everyone taking fine arts has dreams of being an art-maker and that’s it. The reality is that you can do so much more. Fine arts graduates can go on to work as art administrators, curators, programmers, teachers and professors, therapists, researchers, managers, business owners and more.
Advocate for your degree. Educate them on the importance of having fine arts majors in the world. Tell them about the countless jobs that they overlook: the work that they take for granted. Tell them about the movies they like, the websites they visit and the phones they use every day. Tell them about all of the people making great money doing things like graphic designing or handling the social media for large corporations. Ask them who designs the fonts they use or who conceptualized and created the logos for their favorite sports teams and clothing brands. Better yet, who makes the clothes they wear every day?
Those people are artists.
And after all that, politely ask them not to make assumptions about your education or future.
The bottom line is that you are passionate. You are doing what you love and that is why you will succeed. You worked your butt off to get where you are, so don’t second guess your abilities or the worth of the work you do every day. University is hard enough to consistently show up, so the fact that you love what you’re learning puts you in a better position to excel, to seize opportunities, to graduate and to end up in a position you love. So the next time someone criticizes your choice to live a life you love, let them know your goal is simple: to live every day just happily enough that you don’t feel the need, like they do, to put people down.
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