Why I'm Glad I Didn't Go To Art School…

As a child, as in literally ever since I was in first grade, I dreamed of attending a specific private art school. I loved reading and felt like I had an intensely vivid, visually-oriented imagination. At the time, I was riddled with anxiety about comparing my creative work to that of my peers, so while I stayed away from visual arts, I loved creating a storyline whose material was words. I wanted to be a creative writing major.

Fast forward to the summer between my sophomore and junior years of high school. The Dream Art School had a summer program for potential students to sample their classes, on the actual campus! I took that opportunity to experience the city where the institution lives, as well as get a feel for how classes at an actual art college would be organized. Spoiler Alert: This week wasn’t at all what I expected it to be.

The Dream Art School has several popular majors, as well as several dozen other, lesser populated degree programs. For this particular year’s program, you chose two subjects of interest, and you would go to sample classes every day for a week. The Creative Writing course wasn’t at all what I was expecting, it was very collaborative, and for a writer who also owned and managed a blog, this was a process that I was not at all accustomed to. I ended up loving my other concentration, and not getting much from the Writing seminar. This was especially surprising at the time, as I had never considered actually pursuing the other subject that I had registered for, neither academically, nor careerwise.?

The thing that sealed the deal for me on not attending this (previous) Dream Art School was the value for the money. Their writing program was tiny. I understand that since writing wasn’t the most popular program, it didn’t have the same money and resources allocated to it that visual-based art programs had, however, when it comes to the price of tuition for a private college (in the US), I felt that the cost of a writing degree from this school left a lot to be desired. I'm not sure if I would have made a different decision, if I was pursuing one of their top 5 most popular programs, but I felt that the lack of resources for their writing program did not match the price of tuition.

Life surprises you, not to mention the fact that your interests often change dramatically, even within the span of a few years in your late teens. I ended up attending a large in-state university, and studying a type of STEM-related design. I may have fled from the formal pursuit of academic wordsmithing, but that is a foreign point that belongs to another story. Ultimately, I’m glad I didn’t pursue a degree with a highly inflated price tag. Occasionally, dreams are truly best left as hazy variants of idealized storylines.