I’m really good at being a student. Like, really good. I’ve accumulated a few degrees over the years, and I can confidently say that I’m better at being a student than any of the real jobs I’ve had. My perfect career would be perpetual student, but it’s hard to live on that kind of reverse paycheck situation. I love having assignments and projects that force me to learn things and try stuff that I’d either never think of on my own or never allow myself to spend time on if a grade weren’t at stake.
While I would love nothing more than to go to art school, I’m still paying off the mountain of student loans from my last adventure in higher ed. But I really really want to learn art, so I’ve decided to teach myself.
The Teacher Becomes the Student
Fortunately, one of my degrees is in education, so this should be a breeze, right? Sadly, no. My teaching degree makes me very qualified to teach Shakespeare to a room full of surly 9th graders, but it hasn’t given me much insight into the art of teaching (or learning) art.
And to make it worse, it turns out I’m a bad student when I’m my own teacher. I just won’t do assignments that are boring or not related to the kind of art I want to make. Plus, I’m not very good at giving myself meaningful feedback. I have a good eye, so I can tell when something I make doesn’t work, but I can’t articulate why or how to make it better.
It’s like that saying about a man who defends himself in court having a fool for an attorney. I feel like I have a fool for a teacher, plus a room full of dunce students.
But I’m doing it anyway.
Making an Art of Over-planning
I am good at finding and gathering tutorials, lessons, books, classes, and other learning experiences. (Thank you, Pinterest, for making my hoarding digital.) I have a ton of ideas for teaching myself art and making myself practice art. In fact, I have too many ideas, and they’re all jumbled in my head.
For all these reasons, and because I’m such a geek and totally revel in all things list-making and planning and over-planning, I’ve been making a Self-Directed Art School Syllabus for myself. It’s the pinnacle of nerdity, I know.
I’ve decided that my first class is called ART 101, and it will run October through December. I have set up course objectives, reading assignments, weekly tasks, projects, and online courses to take. And because I hate them (and because I’m doing this on my own and don’t have multiple personalities, despite any evidence to the contrary) no group projects! Woohoo!
I’ve only sketched out the first month so far, because I want to feel my way a bit and see how things go. Without a grade and tons of student loans on the line, I’m not sure how much time I’ll be devoting to this little project. I’m not yet prepared to share the details of the syllabus. I need to do some testing and revising first. But here’s a mysterious glimpse.
You see, I have a very hard time with internal motivation (another of my degrees is in psychology). In fact, it’s almost impossible for me to do anything just for me. So this may totally blow up in my face. I’m also a bit resistant to authority these days, so that could be interesting. But even if I do flunk out, I will have saved tens of thousands of dollars in tuition.
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