Why is it that my trivial posts get the most comments? Anyway, Paul Graham posted an essay about what to do during college. I enjoyed his “What You’ll Wish You’d Known” essay with advice to high school students, so I thought I’d take a look at this one as well. Now, I grant that his writing is directed towards people interested in computer science, but he purposefully makes some generalizations about college and what are “The worthwhile departments. . .” that I took a little offense to.
He says that these departments are ones like math and the hard sciences and, at first, I took it that by implication he was completely discarding the fine arts, such as music and theatre. He does, however, concede that “I don’t know enough about music to say.” Graham goes on to state that in subjects such as studio art and creative writing, “Usually you don’t get taught much: you just work (or don’t work) on whatever you want, and then sit around offering ‘crits’ of one another’s creations under the vague supervision of the teacher.” Again, I initially took offense at this cultural neanderthal who was so undervaluing the fine arts, but again I had to reconsider as I realized he’s not judging them as a course of study and he’s really spot on about the value of the courses, at least with regard to theatre at ASU. It’s probably true of almost every school that has a generalized theatre program as well. They’re weak, ineffective, disorganized, too general to be worthwhile to anyone who really wants to go into one of the many professions under that umbrella, and the professors are there either for a temporary job or because they couldn’t make it in the business. So he’s right. Again.
Graham goes on to reveal a few interesting tidbits and insights about grad school, most not terribly interesting to this theatre major, except his mention that “The only thing professors trust is recommendations, preferably from people they know.” He says that everything else is pretty much worthless, according to the people he’s talked to. I’ll have to keep that in mind, but for me it will probably be both the recommendations and my audition.
“College is where faking stops working.” Well shit. Actually that’s not at all true; I’m still faking it. But I’m trying to stop, because I know I can’t fake it in acting. That may sound a little backwards, but what I mean is that you can’t really fake having done the work of rehearsing your pieces and refining your craft. As I discovered at my disastrous audition the other day.
Well anyway, this post kind of fizzled out. Read Paul’s essay, it’s interesting. Unless you’re in fine arts, then just read the highlights here. Definitely read his high school essay if that’s where you are. I’ll be reading his article on essays next, so I can hopefully improve my writing a bit and not make posts that fizzle out like this one…