I'm majoring in Theatre Arts.
People often are very rude about this. Things I hear often said to me or my colleagues are "What are you even going to do with your degree?" or "Wow, you picked an easy one." I even hear, "Why don't you do something useful?"
People with degrees in art have made so many things that you enjoy everyday. The art on your wall, the movie you just watched, the book you're reading, the shows you've seen, the furniture in your house--- the list goes on and on.
It doesn't make sense that people aren't supportive of my degree. For one, it isn't yours. I have plans. My colleagues have plans. For the most part, those plans are to make your life brighter and filled with art---something that has been around and kept people sane since the beginning of time. Be nice to us or you might end up in a play we are writing.
Why are arts seen as inferior?
People think I'm not as smart as any other major. No, I'm not learning complex formulas to save lives, but I'm learning about the depth of human nature and about how to deal with people and how to express emotions to them and potentially change their lives.
It's a different kind of smart. It's a kind of learning that will keep you up wondering how humanity thinks and feels and trying to relate to someone completely unlike yourself. It's designing a small house with three walls and the fourth being imaginary.
It's designing a light plot to accurately display a time of day and a mood of a scene or perfectly lighting the actor from all sides. It's designing a costume that will work with the scene, the actor, the color, and the fabric that fits the time period and locale. It's arranging furniture in a way that a character would. There's so much that I'm leaning as a Theatre Arts major. There's so much to any art.
You see art every single day, whether you know it or not. To affect you, the artist needs to know what they're doing. Maybe they go to school to learn and maybe not.
Don't refuse to support art majors because you don't think what we are learning is important.
