The Moon Paulo Araujo

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In Defense of the Arts

My journey into the arts began the day I auditioned to get into high school. My audition was my parents' solution to avoid the local (not very good) high school and gain admission into drama at an (very good) arts school. Of this audition I can recall the dark room where the blinks of the three teachers watched me deliver my shaky Shakespearean lines of a far too mature monologue. 

To my parents' great relief my audition was successful and I managed to secure a spot in a relatively safe and respectable school. For the next five years I spent my time trying to find my place in dark drama rooms of pushed aside furniture crammed full of loud personalities. Despite the bohemian nature of the pupils and staff there was very little wiggle room for experimentation if it meant a risk of excelling. Yet, for all my years spent at this school what has impacted me the most is my indoctrination to a life of the arts. 

Like many young people thrust into the chaotic life of a post high school world, I was lost as to what to do or where to go. Eventually, I did manage to stumble my way into university only to fall back into the trap of another arts program, this time it was film. I figured being behind the camera was far better suited to me. After having gone through five years of torment at being watched, I needed to regain some power and become the watcher. It was of course not a respectable arts degree like for example other majors such as international relations or history. I imagine arts degrees on a sliding scale, measured by the likelihood of getting a job in that industry. I had decided to do a film degree in a university no one outside my state has heard of in a city no one outside of Australia has heard of. You can say I graduated with this degree with a slight chip on my shoulder. I yearned to prove that I did in fact possess an intelligent brain. This would develop in a superficial acknowledgement that I was an smart human being.  

For a long time, whenever people asked me what I studied I always made sure to be the first to poke fun at myself. I would give a quick remark or roll my eyes before announcing my degree. I wanted to make fun of myself before someone else had the chance to. In desperation I needed them to know that I was not just your average arts degree grad. I was self aware. I was practical. I understood, like the rest of the world, that we look down on the arts degree. It was useless after all. It was this attitude that led me to study law as soon as I had graduated as a film major. Before the certificate had even touched my hands I had enrolled in four law units and was ready to all but forget the unsavoury choices of my past. You must understand, I was compelled to prove to the world that I was smart.

I think it came at no surprise to anyone that I did not finish my law degree. After my failed attempt at getting a law degree, I decided there were other ways I could perhaps still prove I was a smart and level headed individual. It was this thinking that led me to get my first full time position. Yet, in applying for this job I discovered the usefulness of my useless degree. 

To get the said full time job I needed to prove to my prospective employers that I did in fact have a bachelor's qualification. Yet, when I told them my specialisation in the interview, to my surprise, instead of laughing at me they were intrigued. They asked me about what it was like, what I did, how I studied. They wanted to know about the short film projects I did not only in school but the ones I did outside of school with my peers. I eventually did get the job for a university and later learnt that I was the only one hired out of three that had no background in education. 

Somehow, I had proven that I was a capable human being even with my lousy arts degree. Not only had my flimsy piece of paper helped me get a good job, it had gotten me a very well paid job. I was a film graduate with no experience in education, who had never worked more than 30 hours in her life and was given a great full time position. Weird. 

Whilst my full time job was wonderful, it allowed me moments to sit and think about what I wanted. It was during this time where my years as a high school drama student would come back to haunt me. Unfortunately, my high school indoctrination meant that I was not satisfied with the job that didn’t creatively stimulate me. It was during this self reflection that I realised perhaps I had the arts degree all wrong. 

I am a snob when it comes to degrees. I know this and am trying to be better. However, this snobbery comes from a place of fear. The arts degree for me represents the fear of the unknown. Why do so many students choose lives of uncertainty, dangers of insecurity, careers of steep competition? After university I craved safe choices because I couldn’t stand the fear of the unknown. Placed at the centre of my fear was the thought that people might actually see that I had enough gall to believe in myself. You see, the arts student takes on the ridicule and apprehension that people place on them and decides to follow their passions regardless of this societal scrutiny. I thought this was arrogance. But I am now beginning to see that people who believe in themselves might be onto something.  

I felt vulnerable when I would declare that I studied an arts degree because people who do an arts degree usually do them more or less not because it is there only choice forced into, but because something in them drives them to do it. If someone tells me they studied medicine I usually believe that they do it because it feels good to hear themselves say that. I certainly picked law because it felt good to say it. I know that is a generalisation however we don’t all believe every person who tells us they are studying medicine is doing so because they all have a passion to save lives. I wish that were the case, believe me. 

Before I was making fun of arts degrees, I was a uni student surrounded by many arts students who taught me what kind of person is an arts student, and I can tell you that the arts student is different from any other. With most other types of students who do their uni work then go home to then do something fun, there such divide with the arts student. The work they do in uni is only another facet to the work they already do outside of uni. These are people who understand the nature of hustle and the work required to succeed. They are the ones who realise they are paying for absolutely no guarantee of anything. They are not walking into jobs but are in fact clawing their way into fierce and ferocious competition. This propels the arts student to work hard with little more than their spit and grit to work with. To do all of this work only with the power of self belief is a feat indeed.

When I was in my final year of uni, I sat down to have lunch with a friend at a cafe spot on campus. Only days before had Scott Morrison announced his intention to double the fees for arts degrees and halve the fees for STEM degrees. What was meant to be a tactic to entice students into STEM felt like an attack on the arts degree. During lunch with my friend I asked her if she was still planning to add another arts degree to complete a double degree during her final year. My friend looked down at her food and there was an awkward pause as I waited for her to respond. She explained she was not sure if she should add another degree due to the fee increase. It wasn’t smart and would add further costs to an already expensive degree. She was not compelled to add a STEM degree but instead had decided to continue with her current plan. 

I am not trying to imply that we don’t need our STEM subjects, nor the people who are passionate about these subjects. Yet, to have the great scientists and mathematicians we also need the great artists and philosophers. Science and maths might help us to live but arts give us a reason to. So why do we ridicule the people who give us our reason for life? We laughed at Van Gogh and pitied poor John Keats only to see their immense value when it was too late. 

Occasionally I will spot an old uni friend on Facebook and I am always (somehow) surprised at how many of my former peers became what they set out to be. Whilst the rest of us were doubting them they were getting shit done. I look at the people I once laughed at and realise that they didn’t have time to make fun of their degree because they were too busy trying to prove why they did it. 

Despite these defences of the arts, given a second chance I can’t really say whether I would’ve studied something else. I don’t really have a strong desire to have learnt anything different but I can’t help feeling like my high school days pushed me into this life without my knowing it.  I didn’t look to study any other kind of arts degree because what else was there to do? Was there anything else I knew how to do when the arts was all I had ever done? I was the arts kid who went to an arts school who then did an arts degree. I can’t help but feel that this narrative is just far too boring and predictable for me. 

Yet, on the other hand, I don’t know if I am as apathetic in my journey as I claim to be. Perhaps being in rooms surrounded by people chasing impossibly big dreams is addictive. For all the amount of time I spent making fun of them I get the sense that perhaps I was trying to stay beside them hoping their optimism would rub off on me. Perhaps my whole point is only to ask you to please not look down on me for wanting to remain in the places where anything and everything can be created if we dare try.