hey guys!
i know the title here is a BIT of a mouthful but i’ve been walking to talk about this forever and really haven’t gotten the chance to talk about it except for maybe a handful of times briefly when discussing my experience at GW but its actually a SUPER important thing to me and i’m shocked i haven’t discussed it more up to this point. well here’s for this bit of honesty – here we go.
in the schools within george washington university there are SEAS (engineering), SMPA (journalism), GWSB (business), Elliot (international affairs), CCAS (arts & sciences), Milken (public health) and corcoran which is the school of arts and design. Corcoran was bought by gw a few years back and has since been annexed to make corcoran students GW students and vice versa.
it is housed in a BEAUTIFUL old museum across the street from the white house and is easily removed from most of the campus. its a small group of people as it is and there is really no defense for being a ‘corcoran student’.
i would like to say that i’m proud to be a graphic design major – because i am – but i’m really disappointed in the culture at GW regarding art majors. i don’t like saying this but i can count on two hands the amount of times i’ve said that i’m an art major that people then retort “WOW! You just draw for four years and they hand you a degree at the end? Thats a sweet deal.” not only is it completely insulting (yes more than 10 people have ACTUALLY said this to my face) but it completely over simplifies my experience and what i’m actually doing. the first few times that i heard this i attempted to fight with the person who more or less just demeaned me about my major choice, but after that i’ve just decided to say yes and not fight about it. most of these people think that they’re right on principle and will not even listen to what i have to say or what i actually do.
i also experienced this during sorority recuritment and although it was different, it was almost just as demeaning. at GW there are 11 sororities each of which is visited on the first day. i can’t tell you how many of girls from some houses either faked enthusiasm or genuinely didn’t know my major existed – nor the corcoran. we had surface level interactions of me basically saying that i sit at a computer for 4.5 hours a week and mess around with photoshop (okay yes its 4.5 hours of week IN CLASS but you probably don’t even wanna know how much time i spend out of class working on this stuff, and its not just messing around, i’m working creatively). and not gonna lie, this made me considering dropping the whole process. it was extremely difficult to hear people who BY THE WAY had a bio of who i am and about myself PRETEND to care about what i do and what i love. obviously i found a place and people who actually cared and were interested in what i had to say and they genuinely could see my excitement and offered interesting questions they actually had about being an art major at GWU.
with no lie at all, its extremely hard to be constantly underrepresented and have to explain to people why you are worth it. there is a misunderstanding about artists in the world and i think i never truly understood what this meant until i arrived at GW.
with all of that being said, i am extremely proud to be a graphic design major at the corcoran school. with its amazing legacy, artists and stories to last a lifetime i am so glad that i get to be where i am, because the corcoran gallery was an important place in the art world and i get to be in a place where things happen and experiences can be so much different. i love my teachers (no matter how much tsuris they give me) and i love my work.
not to say that this work is easy because its not. i often say to my friends that quantitative and creative work is so different. sure, for me doing a complex application of math and science may be diffucult but for you being given 4 pieces of wood and having to come up with a beautifully executed scultpure with deeper meaning can be difficult. i think that creative thinking is actually more difficult than regular thinking. i am really good at reguritating facts, and so i’m good at school but i often think that making art is more of a challenge. i am a good problem solver and great at ideas but actually i think that art can be harder than normal school.
finally, i want to say that art majors do not just take art classes. i take the normal GEs as everyone else. i still take writing, math, science and more and more. i am just left every other student and even though my classes are different i still attend as much class as everyone else and experience the same thing as everyone else.
thanks for reading!
