2 posts for the price of 1!!
November 15, 2006Bicentennial Rebuttal
I just found a link on my WordPress Dashboard (Go WordPress! You are my favourite, due to clean minimalist design and good typeface choices.) from a site called Bicentennial Baby. Naked Finances is getting its smelly feet in one of the many doors of The Internet*.
I’ve been quoted. Mis-quoted, actually.**
The article Do What You Love… was highlighted, but the main point was a little misconstrued. Or maybe I just wasn’t clear. For the record: I do not think we should all stop attending university. Puh-leeze. I value my university education more than my library card. (And for those of you who know me, that makes it: priceless.) My strong stance stands at the entrance to liberal arts programs. I value the arts…but, to quote my favourite web comics, Shakespeare got to get paid, son.
* (Dun dun dunhhhhh.)
** {Nonetheless, thanks for noticing Naked Finances, Bicentennial Baby Editor.}
Who’s Your Rich Daddy? (Pt. I)
I have been trying to pinpoint what rubs me the wrong way about the Liberal Arts Glut (LAG, from hereon in) now presiding over higher education. Reading this account of how 5 New Yorkers spend their money refreshed my memory. Scroll down, until you get to the week-long diary of Brian, the Subsidized Grad Student.
Here is someone who could definitely benefit from a thorough reading of The Automatic Millionaire. If you don’t have the time, I’ll boil it down for you (or at least the point I took from it, from my skimming it in the quiet section of the Sunnyvale Library on Sunday). Save money automatically. How? Stop drinking $5 lattes every day. (Coined: The Latte Factor– cute. Too bad I don’t watch daytime television, I’m 2 years late on this post.) Brian seems to have learned his lesson by Sunday, when he spend $13.45 on a pound of Starbucks coffee. (Hey Brian, Costco sells 3-lb bags for $10. I bet a New York City subway/bus combination could get you there.)
Anyway, overpriced coffee is not the thing that leaves a bad taste in my mouth… the phrase “subsidized grad student” is. If Brian didn’t have parents footing half the bill for his Manhattan apartment, would he be spending so frivolously? And is his MFA in creative writing ever going to make a good return on investment for his parents? I hope his parents have a very fat nest egg saved for retirement. Otherwise, they have no business softening Brian’s economic landing in the real world. Cut the damn apron strings.
From personal experience (I was 1 of 53 interviewees for a 15 hour/week unpaid internship, and 1 of 8 (that day) in line for a 40 hour/week unpaid year-long internship), I have come to realize a few things. Namely: art jobs don’t pay. Why? Because there are at least 52 people available to do the job you want, for free. How can these people afford to work for free in a city as expensive as San Francisco? Subsidizing –I mean– loving parents, I guess.
Hopefully, most of us LAGs were aware we would not become Automatic Artstar Millionaires with our art degrees, but how many of us signed on without realizing that we would need rich parents or continually inflating debt loads in order to compete with the other aspiring art job-seekers. And are these subsidized art-workers really the best people for the job?
When I was looking for the illustrious coffee-fetching unpaid internship last June, I came across handfuls of Craigslist ads, pleading with people to stop offering their creative skills for free or in trade. I can sympathize. I don’t have rich parents, and I have always worked while in school. However, I finally clued in to what those Craigslist posters were pleading for and stopped working for free. A visit to my previous place of unpaid-employ reassured me that I had been a helpful little gopher during my tenure. There are now three interns on staff, and I had been one of two.
In defending my flavour of Bachelor’s degree, I realize that my art degree has been useful. Without it, I wouldn’t have realized how many art-job hopefuls were out there. I wouldn’t have realized that I needed to start educating myself in something that people are not doing for free, something that is a bit tedious, a bit boring, and not at all cool…Finances—cue the tumbleweeds.
Summing up: an art degree, heck, any degree is a great thing to help you learn how to think. But if you want to land a job—know your market and find a niche. (Hint: the art market is flooded, move on and do it on the side—just don’t call it a hobby. No one who can explain the German expressionist movement should feel compelled to voluntarily call it a hobby.)
Next week: Who’s your Rich Daddy? Pt. II -(Aka: Robert Kiyosaki, eat my shorts)
Comments galore. So why is it that smart, young, creative, talented individuals are lining up to spend their time and parents trust fund allowances on unpaid internships? You’ve got it, muh’ dear: Supply and Demand.
I think that San Fran (and the area) is probably teeming with people like this for any variety of reasons, not the least of which is that where creativity exists, people flock. Perhaps a small ‘to do’ (read: actionable item) in your literary cue might be Richard Florida’s Rise of the Creative Class , followed by his Flight of the Creative Class.
I won’t pretend I read them, but I started to read the former, and will likely make my way back for a more thorough slog. The gist: assemble creative types in a city and the money will follow.
Personally, I think once the money shows up, a short little lag-time later, the super-saturation of arts in the community pushes those who can to be those who beg to be able to…
There are a variety of reasons why people seem to think that art-makers are not worth worth the paper their printing on… not the least of which is that I see a lot of lopsided ideas floating around about education. If one decides to head to university, then when getting the Liberal Arts injected, perhaps a little rounding off with someting practical… which is what you seem to be finding, and also what I’ve been experiencing…
…except I’m getting paid for it right now, instead of payING for it…
Cultural Worker (paid.. in a non-gallery setting..) – it’s a vocation that they don’t talk about at your undergrad. You might hear about it at your MFA, if it’s not completely studio focused. The common cultural worker is someone like me, a smart woman (mostly women in the field.. go figure) who, after having some potential artistic opportunity come her way out of school found personal road blocks got in the way of buying in to the artistic communities version of “how to live your life one-oh-one”…
This is vague. I’ll try to make some points, and then get back to the main one.
1. Selling your art for more than you could ever afford to pay for it is really wretched.
2. Making art can feel really selfish. If you can’t talk about your ideas with your Mom, you might not really be ready to share them through your art.
3. A lot of “culturally educated” people believe in myths that I find dispicable, like: “regular” people are just not educated enough to understand Art, and, we (as in artists) don’t need to think about them when we work.
This last point is particularly irksome to me, given that my current job is to facilitate the arms length peer assessment process for funding of the arts, and the money for this comes from the general population… but I digress.
Back to being a cultural worker, and how I feel this practical experience is helping me fulfill my goal of being a well-minded and yet still creative individual.
There’s no glam involved. In fact, look around at funding bodies and/or promoters of the arts, and you’ll likely find a lot of nice suits, math whiz’z and power point business cases. Not the most visually stimulating, but a good place to start reaching out to other planets of experience.
To answer the question “are subsidized art workers really the best people for the job”.
Short answer, no. Long answer, no… and…
the problem, supply and demand is, you can’t be a Cultural worker unless you have the skills to pay the bills. That is, you need to be good at working, be it in tech support, administrative, programming, teaching, or writing.
…oh how I could go on…
..or photography, if you like.
Anyway, after reading over this posting, I realise I’m really rambling. So here are a few questions for your consideration:
1. Can we really blame the Brians out there, or is there some larger culprit at play that is devaluing the presence of cultural work in the community?
2. Once you’ve become finance savvy, if had to choose between business and pleasure for a career path, what would it be? Or, put another way, do you find more valour in business-related things as a career path, and if so, why?
Also, I just wanted to let you know that we just got a new mayor here in Ottawa, who based in his campaign of a 0% tax increase over 4 years. It’s doubtful that there’ll be anyone left to line up for internships (nor places to have them) if this bored inexperienced business-minded millionaire has his way… so, for now, hurrah for the LAGs. I just wish more of them voted….
Another question:
How do you quantify the ROI on a liberal arts education?
Hi Ali,
Some killer points you made here.
My long delayed reply…
—
1. Can we really blame the Brians out there, or is there some larger culprit at play that is devaluing the presence of cultural work in the community?
—
> I don’t think the Brians are completely to blame. I think an interesting thing to look into might be the effect of increasingly supportive parenting in the last few decades. A generalization could be made here…but we all know the perils of generalizing. Personally, I was raised in an environment where I was encouraged to follow my dreams, regardless of the practical application of my dreams post-university degree. The practicality of living and supporting myself as an “artist” were not discussed, but I think my parents taught me the art of living frugally from a young age. An excellent skill to have when you are pulling in 15K a year.
I love my parents for being so supportive, and I’m glad I figured out early on that Art would never fund my life, as lavash as my one-bedroom apartment, jeans/t-shirts and loaf of wholewheat bread lifestyle is.
Side point: I think culture happens when things are good. When things are bad, art is the first thing to get cut from the budget. That’s the realist view. The romantic view in me fights that.
—
2. Once you’ve become finance savvy, if had to choose between business and pleasure for a career path, what would it be? Or, put another way, do you find more valour in business-related things as a career path, and if so, why?
—
I think the combination of skills I will have, once the savvyness has a certification attached to it, will help me to work mostly on my own terms. I can’t ever imagine signing a contract with an employer that includes benefits, bonuses, etc etc, mainly because I hope I will always be self-employed. Besides, who lays themselves off? I don’t see anything wrong with others working in the finance industry, but I don’t see a lot of valour in being a financial salesperson, (which is what most salaried financial jobs entail). So yeah, summing that up— I don’t see myself “going back” to art, as I don’t think I have left it, and I don’t see myself choosing a strictly financial/business field either. I’ll have my cake AND eat it.
—
How do you quantify the ROI on a liberal arts education?
—
> Purely speaking in monetary terms. How long will it take to pay off a student loan of $100 000 with an interest rate of 7%? And will you ever be paid enough, working in the industry (art professor, gallery/museum curator, artist, etc). Also, are there enough of those decent paying jobs, or has the LAG grown to a size that cannot support itself. (i.e. everyone becomes part-time professors, trying to make art, teach class, and wait tables all at the same time)
Think that’s it for now…
More when I get back from out Pacific Northwest trip.
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