December 21st, 2007
Art Helps Your Career, Your Brain, Your Life
With so many new buildings, products, and Web sites that need designs and an eye for the aesthetic, an art degree can be invaluable in today’s job market. Throw in some computer know-how (Photoshop for sure, but some html and web coding is great for your marketability), and you’re ready to roll. Here’s a top five for art careers:
5. Graphic Designer
4. Multimedia Artist/Animator
3. Art Director
2. Illustrator
1. Fine Artist
But studying the arts goes beyond pursuing an art career. Eric Jensen’s book “Arts with the Brain in Mind” postulates that “[A]rts are not only fundamental to success in our demanding, highly technical, fast-moving world, but they are what makes us most human, most complete as people.” Jensen’s 2001 book states that studying the arts helps the development of multiple neurobiological systems. While the amount of assistance arts offer students in their other disciplines is debatable, researchers have found data suggesting that an arts education helps reduce truancy, drop-outs, and fights at schools. The arts also seem to contribute to students’ emotional balance and sense of harmony, and an arts education helps develop self-directed students who love learning.
If you haven’t noticed, it seems like there’s always something new to learn nowadays, so that point would win me over. I can’t imagine not wanting to learn. Charles Dickens’ book, “Hard Times” describes the schools of his time as filling up their students with facts as if they’re just open vessels. Dickens was critical of this in the 19th century; yet here we are in the 21st century, and we’re still pushing that kind education to ostensibly reach “higher standards.” Seriously, you’d think that our benchmark for success would be to create more lifelong learners (and I know that’s a hard fact for our statistics-loving culture to find). As I said, with so much new information coming at us every day, learning is a must for social, political, economic, and cultural awareness and success. So, encouraging students to enjoy the learning process should be equally if not a greater priority than just upping our national average for SAT scores.
Okay, I’ll step down off my stump, but as you can see, pursuing an art degree not only offers you career opportunities, but it may just make you a happier human being. What more could you want from a degree?
