Fall semester went by so fast, was wonderful and I am now officially a second year student! I completed three studio courses and a humanities - an interesting mix. I am taking this semester off to travel but will be going back next Fall.
When I first started thinking about going back to take a BFA, I had some concerns about the non-studio courses. First, I wasn't sure if I was really up for the academic grind after so many years. Second, while I know research skills, critical thinking, and essay writing are important skills to learn for first year students, I've been there and done that as a student and professionally in another field and was reluctant to face having to go through the process all over again from the beginning.
There are two first year Art History courses that essentially cover the history of art from prehistoric times to present day. There are also two first year Humanities classes that cover critical thinking and an introduction to the art world today. Before applying to the program, I took a first year Art History class to test the waters - I highly recommend this to anyone thinking about doing a BFA. I quickly realized that I really enjoyed the academic challenges and was embarrassed to remember thinking of Art History as a "bird" course back in my science days - I learned a huge amount and spent many hours memorizing hundreds of images of famous artworks and all their related info. The essay writing process was as annoying as expected - perhaps even more so, but what I learned from the content made up for it. I decided to take the second Art History class by distance education from Athabasca University with pretty much the same impressions although this approach was very different - the flexible schedule is a benefit, but I spent far more time and felt overwhelmed by the scope of the workload without the cues provided by an instructor and other classmates in a classroom environment.
After going over the humanities course content in detail, I came to the conclusion that I had covered the content of one of the courses in my past academic life and was fortunately able to convince a faculty member to give me credit for the course. I hesitantly took the introduction to the art world today course and was pleasantly surprised - I've always thought that a key reason to go back to school was to learn the things you don't even know to think about and this course definitely addressed this. I learned about art critique and curating, went to talks by professional artists, and visited local galleries. There was emphasis on learning the "vocabulary" of the art world, which while taxing is helpful in being able to translate "art-speak". We also read a selection of readings, did some research and wrote some papers (with the same annoyances as described above).
Overall, the three first-year non-studio courses that I took were very worthwhile and I feel like they were a good investment of my time. There were some things that I would have chosen to avoid (e.g. I had to learn a third new citation approach - MLA - which I really dislike) but these build character - right?
No comments:
Post a Comment