idk where people get the idea that arts programs are a soft option. arts majors at my school work brutal hours, and the level of competition for seats in the professional programs is fierce. and when you reflect that every artifact and every environment that makes your life easier and pleasanter had to be designed by someone, it's ridiculous to call the design professions useless.
and ftr, this is coming from a microbiology major.
i went from being a history major to being an illustration major and i nearly cried yesterday when my advisor told me i ought to be drawing eight hours a day, every day
the fun thing is he's right, i do need the practice, but i do not physically have eight more hours in my day and now i'm rly upset
anyway my point was that when i was a history major there was sure as hell no one telling me i needed to be doing piles of extra history-related work outside of my actual classwork, bc non arts-related majors just don't work that way
not to mention at my university, visual arts courses were counted at half-time, meaning a class that was 3 hours worth of credit was six hours per week of class time. so someone carrying a 15-hour semester would be (assuming two non-art core classes) in class 24 hours every week, not counting time outside of class spent working in the studio.
also it's hard work to actually get into the field and succeed, in undergrad so many students thought they'd be traditional studio painters full-time... if you go that route, you usually need a day job (or two) and then paint/show during your free time to get anywhere. it's brutal.
and if you don't want to do the traditional art thing, you have to be flexible and find ways to make profitable art (industrial design, tech illustration, graphic design, game art) and then someone will always tell you that's not ~real art~
true, and i bet a lot of people who want careers in the arts have no idea, themselves, just how much work it is until they get into a program and boom, they're not that kid who can draw better than anybody else anymore, they're competing with people who are on their level or better, and you have to continuously produce whether you feel ~inspired or not.
also lots of colleges still have art departments trapped in the traditional art-making model, which is not very sustainable, and students don't get introduced to applied art/design, which imo sets them up for unnecessary hardship/disappointment. art gets a bad enough reputation as a valid career, why make it worse by teaching outdated business models?
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(Anonymous) 2012-04-06 01:46 am (UTC)(link)and ftr, this is coming from a microbiology major.
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(Anonymous) 2012-04-06 01:50 am (UTC)(link)i went from being a history major to being an illustration major and i nearly cried yesterday when my advisor told me i ought to be drawing eight hours a day, every day
the fun thing is he's right, i do need the practice, but i do not physically have eight more hours in my day and now i'm rly upset
anyway my point was that when i was a history major there was sure as hell no one telling me i needed to be doing piles of extra history-related work outside of my actual classwork, bc non arts-related majors just don't work that way
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(Anonymous) 2012-04-06 02:06 am (UTC)(link)bean by bean, the sack is filled.
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(Anonymous) 2012-04-06 01:51 am (UTC)(link)no subject
(Anonymous) 2012-04-06 01:56 am (UTC)(link)no subject
(Anonymous) 2012-04-06 01:57 am (UTC)(link)also it's hard work to actually get into the field and succeed, in undergrad so many students thought they'd be traditional studio painters full-time... if you go that route, you usually need a day job (or two) and then paint/show during your free time to get anywhere. it's brutal.
and if you don't want to do the traditional art thing, you have to be flexible and find ways to make profitable art (industrial design, tech illustration, graphic design, game art) and then someone will always tell you that's not ~real art~
no subject
(Anonymous) 2012-04-06 02:12 am (UTC)(link)no subject
(Anonymous) 2012-04-06 02:15 am (UTC)(link)also lots of colleges still have art departments trapped in the traditional art-making model, which is not very sustainable, and students don't get introduced to applied art/design, which imo sets them up for unnecessary hardship/disappointment. art gets a bad enough reputation as a valid career, why make it worse by teaching outdated business models?