A Letter to Students Who Are Doubtful About Pursuing Art

These were the words I overheard from a prospective student while serving as an orientation leader at NYU’s Weekend on the Square in 2017. Though I didn’t hear the entire conversation, I can probably tell you how it panned out.

In our society, the pursuit of any field that is believed to be unprofitable tends to be discouraged. Sometimes it is discouraged by our parents, and often times even by ourselves. Admittedly, I have fallen victim to the desire to lean towards that which is profitable. As a result, until my decision to pursue my art at the tertiary level, I had never before experienced such self-doubt. During the earlier part of my freshman year, the doubt festered increasingly and was eating me alive. It finally manifesting itself in the thought of changing my major. I feared for many reasons that my pursuit of art would lead me down an unsuccessful career path. I almost drove myself to making what probably would’ve been the biggest mistake of my life.

Choosing what I wanted to pursue in college wasn’t something I was always certain of. In fact, four years ago when I applied, I was convinced that I would be double majoring in Econ and Studio Art. If you met me today, you would certainly be confused by that. By my second semester in college, I quickly learned, without taking even a single class in Economics, that I did not want to go down that path. I suppose double majoring was a way for me to pursue what I was passionate about, that is art, in addition to something that would likely allow me to make money. Thankfully, I knew myself and I knew I would not be able to sit through several classes of micro and macro economics, calculus, etc without being unhappy.