Artist’s Ghost Town
The Eerie Feeling of the End of an Arts Education
As a student in their final weeks of their final semester of an art degree, my classes could be described as being somewhat of a ghost town. At Sacramento State University, the final push in many degree programs is a mass of “supervisory” and “seminar” courses, which is a very strange feeling.
I no longer attend lectures or do assigned reading. I no longer take any sort of exams or adhere to meeting times. When I do have a seminar, it’s less than four people. I have left the activity of being “taught” in exchange for being expected to “produce.” Still, I’m working with a net.
That net is soon to disappear from under me.
I’m sure this experience is nothing new to any pending graduate at any educational level, there is always a looming sense of insecurity that comes with positive change. I’m reminded of a New York Times article that I read many, many years ago: A young woman was graduating with a quadruple major bachelor degree in four unrelated subjects, including anthropology. Her interview included some significant rumination on how she was directly contributing to that discipline’s understanding of a newly-discovered proto-human, and that in two week’s time she expected to be applying for retail jobs from her mother’s basement. Girl, Same.
