I have a hard time understanding the unmotivated and careless. It frustrates me to no end. I myself am very motivated, almost to the point of being cutthroat at times (I have to restrain myself). I also care about what I'm interested in. The same can't be said of some. They stumble through life, not bothering to assess whether what they are doing is working or not. They're quick to blame others for their own mistakes, and as a result, learn nothing.
Then there's the other extreme, the ones who are so focused on their own thing, that they won't follow simple instructions. You're bothering them with your instructions. Did I mention that I teach college? I'm just a part-time adjunct, but I love teaching, it's really a fun exercise (on occasion it may seem in futility). There are always students who I just want to take by the shoulders and shake them like they do in the old movies and ask them if they understand how the decisions they are making now are going to wind up ruining the rest of their lives. Or maybe not ruining per se, but rather making their futures limited and incredibly difficult. I couldn't do that though. It's no longer socially acceptable to tell people the truth.
At any rate, if you desire to be an artist, you should avoid student loans. They are a burden. "The borrower is slave to the lender," which coincidentally, wasn't coined yesterday despite the looming student loan debt crisis in this country. It's from the Bible (Prov. 22:7). Even people from thousands of years ago understood that debt was bad, even if they did think the earth was quite flat. You have a whole generation of people now who don't understand the correlation between their situation and their outstanding debts. They wonder where all their money goes (to the banks), and they wonder why the can't get ahead (quit making stupid decisions). It's easy to be a starving artist when you don't have Sallie Mae breathing down your neck. But try waiting tables with private art school debt hanging over your head (or any other kind of debt for that matter). If you have no debt, the conversation becomes completely different.
Speaking of the Bible, I think some of my student are offended at the religion that makes up the majority of traditional art. I wonder if they understand that for painters a long time ago, it was the church paying the artists' bills and putting food on the table. I don't know what they're doing in high schools nowadays, but most of my students have never heard of many of the old artists whose work hangs in museums around the world. In the twelve years that they spend in grade school funded by the taxpayer, their education didn't even include bothering to mention Degas, Renoir or Monet or anyone else of note. They've only heard of Michelangelo, Raphael, Donatello and Leonardo because of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. How can one aspire to be an artist without having studied art? Some are obviously not even interested in the field they're supposedly trying to enter. I suppose I could understand that if there was money involved, however, the stereotype of the starving artist is a stereotype for a reason. Either you love art, or what are you doing in it?
It's okay to not know what you want to do with your life. It's an entire other thing to go into thousands of dollars in debt and not know why you're doing it. If you need to find yourself, it's much cheaper to backpack in Europe than pay for college. You might also see the paintings of some famous artists while you're there.
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