When I had to decide whether or not to enroll in the MFA program I was looking at, I had to face that reality of the inevitable bill at the end of it, and my ability to pay it back. Once all the facts (tuition, room and board, etc) were drawn up in OpenOffice Calc (think Excel, but free), I realized 2 things: 1) getting an MFA may allow me “time to develop as an artist”, but the main goal of the MFA is to get the credentials to teach, and 2)I don’t really *have* a burning desire to teach.

Facing that, I started on the finance track. So far, it’s pretty dry, but I know, you have to acquire some hard (aka boring) skills to get the job that your soft squishy brain will be happy doing.

And all the time in between is for making art. My idealism (of having your art and eating it too) has been partly extinguished; I realistically know I need a Napolean D killer skill, to go along with my inner art. As long as I never call art my hobby.

I’ve noticed that soft skills (aka brainy-ness and/or the ability to think through problems) counts more when you are not young, or going into your first job. Having just been quasi-promoted to the next level up, my experience says:

You would never have gotten this job for being a thinker, but you would never have gotten out of it if you weren’t.

Employers want to have their youth and eat them too. Young people have to be able to trouble shoot the DVD player and the laptop, have to be learning a second language, taking business classes, writing articles, practising art, and must also be able to do mindlessly boring work, like sticking hundred of stick labels onto file folders, or edit word and excel documents for formatting flaws.

If you’re good at all those things, you can be an admin assistant for the rest of your life. So much for aspirations.

If you want to move further, it seems that the strategy in business is to become good friends with your co-workers, learn how to keep your mouth shut (until the right time), know how to suck-it-up while making other people understand that you feel “lucky to be there” etc.

I could go on at length, but this is your blog…

yes, we are putting off the inevitable “real life”. College/University has replaced highschool as those “best years of my life” time period. Why not? In a comfortable and forgiving environment where you can explore ideas and have cirtical debate without the effort of arranging it, who can focus on getting jobs that they might nor really want.

Getting out, and getting on with things for me was a great wake-up call. Taught me a lot about what I’m willing to spend my time doing if all I’ll get out of it is self-satisfaction…

yes again? I think “we” are better off having gone into and come out of a liberal arts education, because we have the mental ability to understand our own practical lackings. I guess I just figure that getting out and realizing that you have to have some “hard skills” is just a another step up some kind of cliche metaphorical life ladder.