Being artistic through high school and loving my art classes the most was what led to me to make the decision to go to art school after I graduated. I’m now a junior glass major at Massachusetts College of Art and Design and it’s crazy and amazing at the same time. Just like other college experiences, art school is extremely stressful, but also a fun, great experience.
Something I frequently came across on social media when I was a freshman was other college students in the area posting about how they wished they went to art school cause it’s wicked easy to just draw all day and not have to study. This was eye-opening to me as a dedicated student since I put so much time and energy into doing well at school. Experiencing that kind of attitude toward visual art during my first year of college altered how I think my degree will be perceived when I apply to an MBA program after finishing my undergraduate studies, or even when I apply to a job that isn’t necessarily related to the art field.
I’m here to bust the myth that art students are just chillin’ at school all day drawing for fun. We spend just as much time doing work for our studies as students in other fields attending traditional colleges do. There needs to be a change in attitude towards students that have a visual art career goal.
Here’s a day in my life as a commuting art student: I get up at 4:30 a.m. two days a week and 5:30 a.m. two days a week to commute two hours to campus for classes, and on average spend ten hours a day there before going home. One day on the weekend, I drive to school and spend six hours on campus. My schedule is similar to schedules a few of my friends have that commute to their colleges.
When I’m on campus, I have five classes per week that either last three hours or five hours long depending on the class, and then I spend the rest of my time on campus working on three-dimensional glass sculptures that make up my studio art practice. I also have liberal arts requirements in addition to my major requirements, like literature, social sciences, and math. While I know that I don’t have to take nearly as many written exams as students in traditional college settings, I also don’t get the option to do my homework in the comfort of my apartment. So much of what I do requires the use of a glassblowing hotshop or water-fed power tools that I have to be on campus to have access to in order to do my homework.
The fact that art students work with their hands instead of with books and lectures is the biggest difference between their curriculum and the traditional college structure. Just like regular college students, we stay up way too late doing homework, drink too much coffee, and sometimes when we’ve stayed up late enough, we confuse our coffee cup with the paint water cup and get a really bad surprise. Rock on, college students, and to the art students, try not to drink your paint water.
