Posted 9:13 PM by Anonymous

Choose a College, Choose a Life

Reposted from my journal because so many more eloquent words have been written about the past weekend already. I'm sure Raymond will write a good entry about the rest of the weekend which we essentially shared. It was great finally meeting our fearless leader and I look forward to more meetings in the future.

Great art is never produced for its own sake. It is too difficult to be worth the effort. ~George Bernard Shaw

One of the main items on the agenda this weekend in San Francisco was to visit two of the potential colleges Mona might attend to study photography. On Friday she had an appointment with the San Francisco Art Instittue and Saturday was a tour with the Art Academy of San Francisco.

As you can see from my previous journal entry I was really not too enthused about having to tag along for these interviews. I was thinking to myself: "why can't she just do this herself, its her future". However, I should have been thinking: "We need to figure this out together, its our future." At times I have relapses and forget to think in terms of "us". I know, I know that's lesson number 1 in relationship school. But I'm a man, I'm allowed mistakes occasionally.

Friday was horrendous, it was pouring down rain in San Francisco that day, the worst storm they had experienced all year. Our flights were due to arrive at the same time, about 10 am, giving us ample time to get to the interview from the airport. Mona's flight arrived on time because she left so early but my flight left an hour late because an FAA enforced delay and spent another hour circling because of the same delay. As the captain announced we were running out of fuel and would have to land one way or another he also told us he was going to land us in Oakland and we would fuel up and then land in SF. I was thinking, great I could get out of the plane and walk to SFO faster than that will happen. Thankfully, the tower squeezed us in at the last minute.

The campus at SFAI was very beautiful and the art work displayed there was superb. However I was less than impressed with the members of the faculty we met there. He was an old man, soft spoken, with a very limp hand shake and I suspected him to be gay. He asked a visibly nervous Mona a few questions and immediately passed judgement on her. When asked why she wanted to study photography, she said quite few things one of them being "I would like to make money in this field". After that the guy did nothing but try and push her off to another school! He didn't even bother to ask her more questions or explore her personality and only flipped through her portfolio out of obligation rather than with the critical eye of a professor examining a potential student.

Apparently SFAI is a very "ivy league" school that teaches art for art's sake. You go there to learn to "express" yourself. Apparently these same people that have learned to express themselves have also learned something far more valuable, how to live in this world without an income. Heaven forbid an artist should actually seek to make money off his/her work to put food on the table and a roof over their head. That was a foreign concept.

Throughout the entire interview I really want to just tell the guy how full of shit he was. He was a horrible salesman, and obviously had never lived a day in the real world. I pretty much kept my mouth shut for fear that I might initimidate him on the chance that Mona might be reading this experience differently and actually want to go to this school. It would have made my day by strangling this guy from across his desk.

However, we did learn a few things from the experience. First, different schools have different focus. Some focus on the purely fine art aspect of things (art for art's sake), while others take a more realistic approach (be creative but make a living). The former is not the kind of school I want to deal with. Secondly, he taught us that a portfolio should be presented to target a specific thing much like a resume. Mona didn't know this, she just picked 20 of her best photos covering a wide range of areas and didn't tailor it specifically for the school.

I guess I just won't ever understand these "artist" types, the world of business is too different. People like this would get chewed up and spit out on the first day of the job in my field.

On Saturday we headed out for the Art Academy of San Francisco. I liked this place much better from the very first impression. They were much more marketing oriented, the people talking to you actually wanted you to come to their school. They didn't hold some high and mighty attitude about it.

Secondly, they were very career oriented. If showing pieces in a gallery was your thing then they would teach you how to do that. If you wanted to go work for a firm or start your own business after graduation then they had resources to do that as well. Personally I think Mona fits somewhere in the middle of those two ends of the spectrum and this place would help her with both. They also took the attitude that not everyone is born with all the skills it takes to be a successful artist. Heaven forbid you should want to study art but not be born with an easel in your hand or something.

The tour was conducted very professionally, the students were very excited about what they were learning and the tour was informative. The facilities were pretty impressive and they even had bus transportation between their 20 campuses throughout the city. All in all they had their stuff together.

Since this was a tour there were a few other people along with us. I found it particularly interesting that we were the only ones asking questions. The other people there were either high school students their with their parents or people from community college. It reminded me of the time when I was going off to college and I was so exicted to get there that I just wanted to hurry the process along, damn the questions I would figure things out later. I soon realized that I would have done better to ask more questions before I jumped into college. Today I was the questioing adult wondering why the kids were not asking more questions about their future.

So we still have a decision to make. Part of that decision is whether to look at more schools or not. But at this point if I were in Mona's shoes I would be content going to the Art Academy. I most definitely would not pick SFAI. But, that is a decision that we must make together.