I graduate from college on December 11th after a 27 ½ year journey. I began college in the fall of 1993 at 20 years old. The only person who encouraged me to go to college was a former teacher, Mrs. Summers. Although I love learning and wanted to attend college, I thought I couldn’t afford it. Mrs. Summers helped me find out about financial aid. Applying was a complicated by my father’s refusal to fill out the financial form. I was declared an independent student to bypass his participation. My college journey didn’t get easier from there. I struggled to choose a path and prioritize my education.
In America there is pressure for education to provide a guaranteed higher income. I tried to find a career path with a salary that would easily justify borrowing the money to attend. The closest I got was when I changed my major to computer programming. I had taken a test to determine an appropriate career choice. Studio arts was my top match but I had been warned away from the arts because of the lack of income potential. The two choices that were financially stable were computer programming and accounting. It may seem odd for a creative person to match with accounting but it was because of the organizing researcher in my personality. I chose programming because I was warned a creative accountant can get into trouble. I hated programming. I was told it required a lot of creativity. But when I took the classes it was purely code on a screen. It was boring because I needed visual stimulation.
I quit.
I don’t regret my business college detour. I enjoyed many of the business classes. My husband also found his career as a programmer after becoming interested in my homework.
But I was lost again.
I spent 10 years, out of school, raising our children and caring for our home. I focused my creativity into projects for them. Birthday parties and holidays meant art projects. I designed and built furniture that helped organize their bedrooms and gave them vertical space to climb. I investigated baking projects. I designed, planted and maintained extensive landscaping around our home. I learned how to grow a vegetable garden. I drove my husband crazy with project after project. The expense felt justified because it was for our family. It’s clear now that I was fulfilling my need to create.
America’s obsession with wealth is destructive to creativity. Growing up I understood money was important. Although I didn’t understand why a brand name made something more valuable (I still don’t), I understood that it was important to other people. I understood that I was supposed to care about the tags on my clothes not if I liked wearing the clothes. Although my family was in the low end of the middle class, at times dipping into poverty, I attended schools with some wealthy children. Seeing people try to impress those families looked like a waste of time to me. My extended family was more securely anchored in the middle class and wanted to be the wealthy family that people wanted to impress. They were obsessed with get-rich-quick schemes. It taught me that the only thing that really matter to them was money. It didn’t matter how you got it as long as it was a lot and acquired with ease. I learned success was defined by ever increasing financial success. It didn’t matter if you enjoyed what you were doing. Enjoyment should be saved for hobbies paid for by enormous wealth.
This wealth based foundation, that I thought was required, crippled my ability to find a balance between my deep sense of responsibility and my need to be creative. For decades, I felt guilt when I spent money and time on an art project unless it was a direct benefit to my family. I avoided doing work that was solely for me. I directed my creativity away from ideas that were likely not going to be widely appreciated. I felt guilty when I would sell pieces at only the value of the materials; because profit determined my worth. But at the same time I was afraid if someone paid me to be creative I would fall short of their desired outcome.
I found a place that lined up just right with my need to create, benefited my family, and did not have the pressure of being paid for my work. Really, it found me. After giving handmade thank you notes to the cast of a show my husband was in at our community theatre, Chuck, the set designer asked me to volunteer as an artist at the theatre. It took over my life. I gave all my free time to the theatre and got to be creative and practice painting. I liked that the expectations were low for a volunteer. I did my very best work, as I usually do, but being a volunteer defused the pressure to be rich. My skills were valued nearly equally to the wealthy people who donated money. However, volunteering for ten years led to an expectation of me doing everything for free, which over time made me feel less valuable. In 2016, after my community chose the most selfish man alive as president, I quit volunteering. I couldn’t give myself to a community that worshipped such grotesque greed.
Volunteering at the theatre had inspired me to go back to college. I decided that I needed better artistic skills and knowledge. I also didn’t like that I had this unfinished goal. I took a few classes a semester and skipped semesters here and there. Slowly I was getting near completing my degree. I had some barriers in my path. I maxed out my school loans decades earlier so I had to pay for classes out of pocket. When I got behind on my tuition, I couldn’t register for the next semester. I had an instructor that didn’t like me; it was mutual. If new inspiring instructors hadn’t been hired I don’t know if I would have gone back to finish. I had family issues. I had marriage issues. I still had guilt that I was being selfish in wanting to complete a degree that many people over the years had told me was useless and a waste of time and money. Those words tore me down. I felt like I constantly had to try to build back my self-esteem with each hit of discounting of the value of my creativity. Looking back, I now know why it hurt me so much. Creating is who I am. It isn’t a hobby. It isn’t a source of income. It is at the core of my desire to live. By saying investing in my creativity was a waste they were saying I am a waste; that I am not valuable.
The creatives in our lives have enormous value. We as Americans just don’t consistently see the value they add. We take them for granted. We enjoy their work when it is free and complain when it costs money. When money is exchanged for the work produced by a creative person it usually does not actual go to the person who created the item. The financial reward is given to someone who discovered and exploited the creative person. We assign value with money and reward the collector over the creator. Collectors aren’t bad. But their collection is more valued in American society than those who created the collected work. This distorted allocation of value does not invest in the source of the valued item. It pools monetary value with those who do not create, which doesn’t make sense to me when all of our value is pinned to monetary reward.
People who hurt can also help. One of the biggest lessons I’ve learned over my 27 ½ year journey to being a college graduate is, the help we receive from others is complicated. One of the people who told me a BFA was a waste of time and money was also one of the people who pushed me along my artistic path. He didn’t know how important a BFA was to me. He didn’t know how deeply my need for education is linked to my identity. He didn’t know my self-worth grows when rooted in learning and expression and dies without them. Some of our biggest cheerleaders can also be the source of our most hurtful disappointments. I have gained more insight into who I am from the disappointments than the achievements. Pushing through, finding new paths and jumping over obstacles are how we learn what we are capable of doing. Choosing to push, find, and jump is difficult. We really don’t know if it will be worth the effort. But I’d like to think of the effort as being the item of value. Yes, it feels really good to be completing my BFA but this moment of completion is a bit of a let-down. This goal I’ve carried for 27 ½ years is ending. The build-up to this moment was where I connected with who I am and found what I needed. I have other goals to learn through but getting my BFA was the longest roller-coaster of a goal I think I will ever have in my life. It did not have to be this difficult to achieve. I made a lot of poor decisions. I had obstacles that other people may not have. But recovering from poor decisions and overcoming obstacles has made me who I am.
A little over a year ago I decided to accept who I am. I’m not going to pretend I haven’t made mistakes. I’m not going to pretend like 27 ½ years isn’t a ridiculously long fucking time to get a BFA. I’m not going to pretend like I haven't been one of my biggest obstacles. Accepting who I am has freed me to focus on what I want to do instead of trying to fit someone else’s definition of my success. My success is rooted in creating what I am inspired to create. That’s it. If I’m creating the things I want to create then I am a success. I’ll figure out the money-to-survive thing along the way but I am not going to allow money to define my worth as a person, the value of my education, or the value of my work.
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