I went to art school and graduated with a bachelors in graphic design. I am great at drawing, but it has not helped me in any way to get a job, and I feel like an idiot if I tell people that I went to art school. After a summer of working at a large company which is not the place you want to go if you have your heart set on being creative, I am considering telling my kids that I was in the business school. The only problem is that they are now old enough to know what business school is.

I feel like an idiot because I don’t even like art that much and yet I went to art school. When people ask me what I studied in college, they seem disappointed when I tell them obviously it was art so then they ask me did you like it and my answer seems really stupid.”

It’s a question that popped up on my mind for several times when I was about to tell my kids about my education. I couldn’t find any appropriate way to explain it. It’s not the kind of thing you can say in one or two sentences, or to be honest, even in ten or twenty sentences.

Degree in art is not something you can put your finger on and say this is what you have. The only thing that stays with you from art degree is the fact that you are able to create art if you want to. You’ll never be able to make a living from it if that’s what you’re after, but you can do it if you want.

I graduated with a BFA in illustration (which was called printmaking back then) and some creative writing courses under my belt. I’ve gotten myself into a good situation now, but those courses weren’t really turning me into a pro illustrator at the time, they were trying to turn me into an artist or something like that. If I look back now, the only thing I can say that I learned from my degree is how to make things with my hands and take them apart again if need be.

I know I am not alone in having these thoughts. Just thinking of the art school graduates around me and the conversations we have had, I can fill out a list of reasons why you might feel uncomfortable about going to art school or even admit to yourself that you did:

You felt like you were surrounded by talent that was so much greater than yours

Your friends and family thought it was a waste of time

You didn’t get the job you wanted when you graduated

You don’t feel like an artist

You are not sure what an artist is supposed to do

The job you got when you graduated doesn’t feel like enough for someone with a degree in art, even though it was hard to get and pays well

You may be a little surprised to learn that I graduated from Art school. My art is terrible and I have been told to my face that it is not very good. But, I am an artist. That’s what I do. I can’t stop being an artist even if I wanted to.

So where am I going with this? Well, in a recent post on my blog called “The Dirty Little Secret” (http://theartofblakegopnik.blogspot.com/2011/08/dirty-little-secret_28.html) I was asked why I didn’t just say that I went to art school and leave it at that. Focus on the fact that I graduated and make it sound like a great thing instead of trying to hide the fact that my art is not very good and that everyone tells me so every single day of my life.

Looks like this will be another one of those posts where you will pick up the tone and subject matter in the opening paragraph but not know how you got there until you get to the end…

I’m an MFA who’s teaching at an art school. I’m teaching some pretty basic drawing and painting skills to students who, I’m guessing, did not get into a prestigious art school in order to learn how to draw and paint.

Telling my parents that I went to art school was hard enough. Telling them that I wanted to teach at an art school was even harder. Now I have to tell them that I got a job at this place.

This is the kind of thing that no one tells you about when you decide to go to art school, unless they’re trying to discourage you from going. The crux of their argument rarely includes the words “art school” or “teaching.” It goes more like this:

“Do you really want to spend your life explaining why your paintings are worth anything? Or do you want to go get a real job?”

Art education is a weirdly huge part of the art world, but it’s mostly ignored by the rest of us. If artists think about art schools at all, we tend to assume they’re places where kids go for four years in order to learn how not to become artists, or else just places where rich people send their kids so they can say they went or their

My parents, who are not very tech savvy, emailed me this link to their iPad. I thought it was a joke. The app is called iWritePaper and the service costs 9.99 per month for 3 papers written by “professional writers”. I thought about how I would feel if my dad was paying someone to write papers for him; in fact he went to law school and did not pay to have papers written because he had that much integrity.

Turns out they sent every one of his emails back as undeliverable. Turns out they’re a business that sends spammy emails offering to write your papers for you, so naturally my dad’s email address has been on several spam lists for years now. He probably has 14 different emails in his account right now that are no longer active because they’ve been blocked by spam filters on various websites or companies.

What do you do when your dad thinks that plagiarism is okay? When your father doesn’t even recognize that what he did is wrong? What do you say when your mother, who is actively involved in the education system, thinks it’s okay to use this service and has no idea why she shouldn’t? How do you explain why this is a bad idea? How can we talk about ethics and