Do Artists Need College?

“Do I really need this?”  I used to think to myself at 3 am while trying to stuff my brain with statistical facts before a big test.

I am not into algebra.  I don’t like algebra.  My focus is in the arts for pity’s sake, why the heck am I doing this to myself?

And then I would scream something like “F***k you Math!” while I throw my textbook across the room knocking over a glass of something sugary, which would then tip all over my sleeping my roommate.  Waking her, and her wrath.

I didn’t need to go to college to be an artist. I could have continued doing what I was already doing.  Painting, sketching, experimenting, and buying up every art book I found interesting.

I think of what life would’ve been had I never signed on to let a classroom of judgmental art-novices stand over my shoulder.  Watching my work with one collective eyebrow up, criticisms at the ready.School

So, why am I doing this?

Because I want my bachelors.  Because so many in my family didn’t get one, and I wanted to be a credit to our name and an inspiration to my children.  I wanted a better income and, hopefully, a better life.

I also wanted the general college experience.  Communal living, meeting up with cafeteria study groups, going on panty raids.  Stuff like that.

The main reason I did college, even though I didn’t have to, was because it would never, ever, hurt to learn something new.  Even if it means the casual destruction of math textbooks.

 

One thought on “Do Artists Need College?

  1. Jason Love says:

    We had to look up who Jackie Deshannon was.

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