RHSMstoner
Bluelighter
- Joined
- Aug 28, 2001
- Messages
- 39
i guess this is a potential college essay of mine, i dunno, it may be a bit self loathing if i'm trying to whore myself to some admissions office, but i'm still pretty happy with it:
Good would be an Understatement
“Good would be an understatement:” not exactly a fair thing to say about a nine year-old boy’s artwork. I was in third grade, sitting in the library, minding my own business and drawing a picture when two teachers came up behind me. One asked the other what she thought of my drawing, and she was enthusiastic enough about it to reply with that infamous quote. I think that’s about the time things started to go wrong.
At the time, such occurrences made me feel like I was really something special. Everyone had something to be good at, some kids were good at sports, some were good at school, and I was good at drawing. I drew all the time, and now when I think back on it, it really didn’t matter how good I was. It was just something I loved to do. Well, at first it was. As I was constantly bombarded with praise about how good my artwork was I slowly started to like art because I was good at it, instead of for the reasons that really matter. Art should be an outlet for a person’s creativity, a way for someone to make something out of nothing, and ultimately a way for a person to learn more about him or her self. But for me, art had become a way to show off. I would mope my way through the entire school day, waiting for art class, the only place where I really felt comfortable. I assumed that pattern would be characteristic of the rest of my academic career, but I was only nine, and what I didn’t know could have filled a warehouse.
By the time middle school rolled around, I was still just as enthusiastic about art as ever. Still spending countless hours sitting at a TV. tray, rattling off drawing after drawing. I had big plans for my future as an artist, I assumed I would go on to be something really outstanding. In a way, it’s funny to look back at how full of myself I was. I think my hubris was a result of my reputation more than of my actual artistic talent. During middle school, a lot of students started producing good artwork. My drawings stood out less from the others hanging on the art room wall, but I didn’t really think too much of it. The real problems didn’t start until high school.
By the time I was fifteen, I started to notice that the artwork of the future I had envisioned as a sixth-grader was not quite what I had expected. I had definitely learned a lot, and my skills had improved, but I hadn’t become the superstar artist I was expecting to be. If good would be an understatement to describe a third-grader’s artwork, then shouldn’t that persons artwork be amazing by the time he’s a freshman in high school? I certainly thought so. My attitude remained the same through sophomore year. I was disappointed but I could still deal with it, at least for a while.
Come junior year, I was enrolled in a two-year AP art class, with more big plans for what I would learn and how I would develop as an artist. Things started out fairly well. I was reasonably happy with the pieces I was producing and having a good time over all, but I wasn’t putting the effort into it that the other AP students seemed to be. One thing that started to bother me was that some of my peers, to whom I had been a bit of an artistic mentor in previous years, started to get better than me. The fact that that bothered me made me wonder certain things about myself. Am I so shallow that I can’t enjoy art if I’m not the best at it? Do I really care about art or do I just care what people think about me? Should I even be in this class? For the first time, serious doubts about my potential as an artist started to fill my head. Some days I couldn’t even bring myself to go to class, and when I did go I could scarcely motivate myself to do anything productive. I would constantly start pieces and abandon them halfway through. Sometimes I would just wander around the class and see what other people were working on. It felt like whatever had made me really love art was missing, and the harder I tried to rekindle my interest in art, the more I lost it.
It’s been a good six months since I’ve completed a piece of artwork. I still doodle in my textbooks here and there, but I never just sit down and draw something the way I used to. I have no idea if I’ll ever be able to rediscover what it was about art that meant so much to me. But I doubt that art will ever be as important to me as it was on that fateful day in third grade when I sat in the library and heard those five lousy words that I could never live up to.
Good would be an Understatement
“Good would be an understatement:” not exactly a fair thing to say about a nine year-old boy’s artwork. I was in third grade, sitting in the library, minding my own business and drawing a picture when two teachers came up behind me. One asked the other what she thought of my drawing, and she was enthusiastic enough about it to reply with that infamous quote. I think that’s about the time things started to go wrong.
At the time, such occurrences made me feel like I was really something special. Everyone had something to be good at, some kids were good at sports, some were good at school, and I was good at drawing. I drew all the time, and now when I think back on it, it really didn’t matter how good I was. It was just something I loved to do. Well, at first it was. As I was constantly bombarded with praise about how good my artwork was I slowly started to like art because I was good at it, instead of for the reasons that really matter. Art should be an outlet for a person’s creativity, a way for someone to make something out of nothing, and ultimately a way for a person to learn more about him or her self. But for me, art had become a way to show off. I would mope my way through the entire school day, waiting for art class, the only place where I really felt comfortable. I assumed that pattern would be characteristic of the rest of my academic career, but I was only nine, and what I didn’t know could have filled a warehouse.
By the time middle school rolled around, I was still just as enthusiastic about art as ever. Still spending countless hours sitting at a TV. tray, rattling off drawing after drawing. I had big plans for my future as an artist, I assumed I would go on to be something really outstanding. In a way, it’s funny to look back at how full of myself I was. I think my hubris was a result of my reputation more than of my actual artistic talent. During middle school, a lot of students started producing good artwork. My drawings stood out less from the others hanging on the art room wall, but I didn’t really think too much of it. The real problems didn’t start until high school.
By the time I was fifteen, I started to notice that the artwork of the future I had envisioned as a sixth-grader was not quite what I had expected. I had definitely learned a lot, and my skills had improved, but I hadn’t become the superstar artist I was expecting to be. If good would be an understatement to describe a third-grader’s artwork, then shouldn’t that persons artwork be amazing by the time he’s a freshman in high school? I certainly thought so. My attitude remained the same through sophomore year. I was disappointed but I could still deal with it, at least for a while.
Come junior year, I was enrolled in a two-year AP art class, with more big plans for what I would learn and how I would develop as an artist. Things started out fairly well. I was reasonably happy with the pieces I was producing and having a good time over all, but I wasn’t putting the effort into it that the other AP students seemed to be. One thing that started to bother me was that some of my peers, to whom I had been a bit of an artistic mentor in previous years, started to get better than me. The fact that that bothered me made me wonder certain things about myself. Am I so shallow that I can’t enjoy art if I’m not the best at it? Do I really care about art or do I just care what people think about me? Should I even be in this class? For the first time, serious doubts about my potential as an artist started to fill my head. Some days I couldn’t even bring myself to go to class, and when I did go I could scarcely motivate myself to do anything productive. I would constantly start pieces and abandon them halfway through. Sometimes I would just wander around the class and see what other people were working on. It felt like whatever had made me really love art was missing, and the harder I tried to rekindle my interest in art, the more I lost it.
It’s been a good six months since I’ve completed a piece of artwork. I still doodle in my textbooks here and there, but I never just sit down and draw something the way I used to. I have no idea if I’ll ever be able to rediscover what it was about art that meant so much to me. But I doubt that art will ever be as important to me as it was on that fateful day in third grade when I sat in the library and heard those five lousy words that I could never live up to.
