There is a usual set questions that every college goer is asked throughout the year, may it be during a holiday break, a phone call home, whatever the case may be. You know the questions: What classes are you taking? What do your grades look like? How are classes? These questions together, asked repeatedly in short time spans, makes every college student want to write the answers on a piece of paper to give to everyone and anyone who they know and happens to be with in talking distance of them.

Now imagine those questions being asked, but instead of being an English major, or a pre-whatever major, you are a fine arts student. Among this broad classification, we find the music major, theatre major, art major, dance major, and so much more. If you don't think your college has any of these, those artsy students are probably tucked into the oldest building on campus working away in their own division of classes. With these creative courses comes one of the most painful statements every fine arts major dreads: "Those aren't real classes."

Alas, my dear friends. Every course that an fine arts major takes, is a real course. We just want you to know that. On that same note, our degree is real as well, and there are plenty of things we can do with it once we graduate, but that is a topic for a different time.

If you think about it, the major-specific courses, BFA students are required to take are very similar to other Bachelors degree courses. Art courses use math all the time -- making straight lines, finding angles. It's a basic necessity in art. Theatre kids typically take a script analysis class, which uses the same analytical skills while examining a script that an upper level English class may use while looking at pieces of literature. Dance majors take anatomy classes for the sake of knowing their what bodies consist of and do so that they know how the body is working while in mid-pirouette. The comparisons go on and on with the list of fine arts majors and courses.

BFA students use the same skills that any other college student uses, just in a different way. That's what fine arts students do best -- look at the world in different ways. Their views and perspectives of the world make our lives the way they are today. Fashion designers designed the clothing you are wearing. Artists paint, sculpt, or draw things that make people feel. Actors and actresses perform theatrical works that give us an inside look into our own minds, as well as those of others, and view how the world is. Musicians write, record, and perform the music on the radio, television, and performance spaces of the music festivals we attend. The training done for such professions is obtained through schooling.

So there it is, your reminder that the college classes that the artsy kids are taking are as much of a class as the ones for other degree programs. They work just as hard to maintain their GPAs, and they study as much as any college kid during finals week. Don't discredit them, they are as much college students as any one else. One day, they might change the way you see the world around you. Until then, let the BFA majors stay nestled up in in their old, tiny buildings, and continue to learn how to gain skills from the world around them. Maybe even learn alongside them sometimes, because everyone will walk across a stage with a college degree in the future, and they might let you in on a secret or two.