The Art Crisis
Growing up I always hated art I was never good at it, and no matter how much I tried I could never get better. I toughed out my art classes all throughout my schooling career until I reached high school. That’s when I reached the point where I just couldn’t tough it out anymore. It was like an art class from hell, instead of just going through the motions of doing the painting, drawing, or sculpting it involved taking notes, homework, and writing papers about our piece. I couldn’t stand it but I was stuck in it until my senior year because I needed the art credits to graduate. Luckily I caught a short lived break my junior year when I transferred schools and there were less required art credits. I cruised through the first semester without any art classes. I was happy until I got my second semester schedule and saw an art class. I just stared at it and couldn’t believe how I got it on my schedule. I decided to try the class, but had an awful experience and decided I would change my schedule.
That day after I finished eating lunch I went to talk to Mrs. walker the teacher in charge of schedules And Mrs. KIlbourne my grades academic advisor. That conversation only brought worse news about my schedule was only compatible with another art Class a writing class and history electives. I knew Immediately I didn’t want to take a history elective as I had just taken one from the same teacher and he was a hard grader for electives the whole class pretty much failed and I couldn’t have another grade like that on my transcript. So I was stuck between art class or a writing class I ended up picking the writing class because I was so done with art at that point, and I always that my writing could use a little improvement, and that the class would hopefully help me with future academic papers and maybe the sat writing section. But little did I know My whole perception of writing was going to be changed; in this class I learned that I needed to find my freedom in writing to enjoy doing it.
The first day I walked into the class I was shocked when the teacher Erin Farmer told us we were going to draw a map of our neighborhood and put a star in the area where five of our favorite childhood memories happened. The first thought that popped into my head was “great no matter what I do I can’t get away from drawing.” I was expecting lessons on grammar and writing techniques maybe some tips on how to write an a plus paper, and there I was drawing a map of my neighborhood. I was very confused at what I got myself into until Ms. Farmer pulled me aside at the end of class and explained the syllabus to me since I missed the first day of her class. It ended up being the complete opposite of what I was expecting. I ended up signing up for an art of writing course where we were just going to work with different styles of writing throughout the year that drew us away from the common 5 paragraph essay that we all dreaded but had to use for almost every academic paper. Every assignment in the class gave us almost complete range of freedom besides the writing style we had to have our writing follow. We covered many topics like speeches, memoir’s, blog posts, and Narratives. There were two projects that really stuck out to me in this class and showed me how having the complete freedom to write about whatever I wanted is what I enjoyed, and I didn’t like when those freedoms were taking away by giving strict guidelines on what to write about and how to write it. Those projects where my memoir and writing for the school newspaper. My memoir is where I really found joy in writing i got to write about certain moments that had an impact in my life where I found freedom under strict parents and laws. The other project really showed me my dislikes in writing I was given three topics I was required to cover for the newspaper putting a little bit more of a lock on my freedom. I didn’t like being told what to write about I didn’t mind the grammar edits to my paper because I suck at grammar but I hated having my paper go through the newspaper editor having them tell me to take certain parts out or reword or rearrange it made the paper feel fake and that it wasn’t a representation of my real work. From these two assignments I was able to draw the conclusion that I really enjoyed writing when I had the freedom under structure like I also find joy in in real life, and I really disliked having many guidelines and having artificial work produced.
