Growing up, my least favorite thing to hear as a “creative type” was that art wasn’t as important as other subjects and, when I became an art major in college, that art “isn’t a career” and that an art degree is “not a real degree.”
In college, I would often hear other students say they were taking art classes “just for an art credit” and that they actually thought it was "bullshit” that they had to take the course at all because, of course, they thought that art classes weren’t as important as whatever subject they were majoring in, and some went so far as to think that art majors were lazy people looking to get an easy degree.
I hate hearing all of this even more now that I have had a BFA in Studio Art for 3 years.
I will be the first to admit that, before I started majoring in art, I thought the only way to be successful was to get a business degree, or a science degree, or a degree in ANYTHING except the arts; I thought this because everyone in my life was ALWAYS feeding me this lie. I had always been drawn to more creative things, like making music and writing and taking photos, and I think a lot of people saw this and thought they were doing me a favor by saying “those are just hobbies; you need to work hard to get a REAL degree so you can get a REAL job making REAL money.” They thought that, by telling me that degrees in the arts weren’t “real,” it would make me want to choose something more “real,” like business.
Which is what I did, until I learned that I liked photography and art history more than finance and macroeconomics.
There is a common misconception floating around out there that art degrees are all about teaching you how to draw, paint, sculpt, or take pretty pictures without teaching any useable life skills. However, I am here to tell you that this a fallacy.
One of my best friends from college, Sam, double-majored in biology and studio art, and, when I asked him how he felt about arts majors versus other majors, he told me:
“While earning a BFA in studio art and BS in biology, I personally found the art to be significantly more work than the biology, but that says more about me than about the programs. I had friends in each program that struggled to pass the introductory classes from the other program for general education requirements. So I can't take the idea that one degree is harder than the other seriously. Difficulty varies from person to person, for any task. Some might argue that it's utility, not difficulty, that makes one degree more valid than another. And I can see how the utility of biology would be more obvious, but I'd challenge anyone who doubts the importance of artists to imagine going a month without using or looking at anything designed by an artist. It's probably not something you could realistically do, but it would be a bleak experience.”
Earning my BFA taught me how to give and take criticism, how to communicate my ideas and express my views in an effective way, how to collaborate, and how to stand up for myself and my beliefs; it taught me how to view the world around me with kinder eyes and an open heart, how to enjoy the little things around me, how to care for and listen to others, how to have fun, and, most importantly, how to unashamedly be myself in a world that often encourages us to fit one particular idea of what it means to be a person.
All this to say — stop telling people art degrees are not real degrees. Stop telling your artistically-inclined kids not to get degrees in art, theatre, and music because they are “useless” and will make them “poor” the rest of their lives. There are so many cool things out there you can do with degrees in the arts (in fact, here are 38 of them); I am not saying you won’t have to work hard to get these careers, but I am saying that your degree will not be a hindrance unless you make it one.
As Sam pointed out, it is impossible to conceive a world without art — even our early Paleolithic ancestors painted in caves and made jewelry during their free time. So, next time you go to tell someone that “art is not a real degree,” think about the fact that little in this world would exist without the creative mind of an artist.