Reflections on Art School

From a guy who dropped out

I had always wanted to go to art school. When I told my mom that I wanted to go to school for interior design in 2005. She immediately disapproved and said it was, “too gay.” Being homophobic as she is that was pretty much that. I did end up attending an ultra-conservative school in Florida for music. I didn’t last, and before my untimely expulsion, I was failing miserably. At the end of the semester, I was going to change majors. By January 2007 thoughts of art school had largely not. I stayed solidly in political science for my 2.5 years at UNC in Greeley and also in graduate school. By 23, I had 2 degrees in that ancient field. So why did I sign up for 2K in debt to go to the Art Institutes of Colorado? One part of me had a dream to fulfill, and another part of me was looking for answers. Maybe, I thought that an arts degree would be what was missing in my tool kit for my career.

At the time I was still working at New Culture, and it was already looking like I was soon to be summarily unemployed. As it would turn out, I was absolutely right. After all of that work I was desperately trying to get out of the marketing game Thankfully, by the time admissions day came I had the bandwidth to deal with it. I decided on the year-long Fashion Retail Management program. It was short and business minded. Even my family was supportive. My financial aid was short, and my Dad gave me the money without question. I went through the log and tedious admissions process. Which I had the chance to critique heavily. I had a wonderful admissions advisor and by the time I settled into my first class, I was ready to change my life–it never happened.

In fact, the only people that I got along with were some great people in the library. I had a professor call me an idiot to my face along with the rest of my class, in fact she did it twice because I had two classes with her. Ironically enough, my only favorite class was fundamentals of marketing. The very industry I was trying to get away from at the time was the only thing that I truly enjoyed. So, where did that leave me? That left me with a difficult decision. Drop out of something for the first time in my life or try to struggle through it. I started by approaching the Dean of Academics. I explained my problem with the program, and he recommended to talk to my program director. By the time I could get an appointment, I had long decided to drop out. I quit going to class except for fundamentals of marketing, and I basically went back to work. The deadline to withdraw without getting an F came and went. I already knew that I was dropping out. I think I was shocked by the overall intellectual lack of sophistication in the student body as a whole. I guess I’ve hung around corporate people and others for far too long.

So I marched in and told my department head why I was dropping out. Between my overall dissatisfaction with school and being called an “idiot” twice by the same professor in two separate classes, she agreed that it was time for me to move on. It was a nice experiment, and I know that I never—ever—want to do that ever again. They keep emailing me about re-enrolling; I unsubscribed.