2008 Woodie Awards
Sometimes our dreams need redefining to match up with reality
By: Levi Joseph Wonder
Issue date: 4/9/08 Section: Forum
One of the most significant realizations I've come to accept in the past eight years is that life, and everything in it, is a compromise in one way or another.
I wanted to be a digital and fine arts major. Instead, I'm studying visual communications technology, with a bit of graphic design on the side.
Don't get me wrong; I picked the right major for what I want to do with my life. I've been working on some rather interesting projects so far this year, and I shudder with delight every time I get to make a vector drawing of a barbarian warrior wielding a bass guitar.
But if I could study anything I wanted to study - and I mean anything - then it would be art.
I love art, and when I say that, I mean it. I took four years of fine arts study in high school, and I worked with a wide variety of different media, from oil paint to screen printing.
Then, when I learned that BGSU offered a respectable art program, I knew what I wanted to study.
But I didn't know what I needed to study.
I'm no spectacular artist. Sure, I can whip out a decent self-portrait with some thick art paper and a handful of pencils, but my stuff pales in comparison to some of the absolutely phenomenal work on display at the art building.
When I walked through the art building during a tour of the University, the realization hit me like a sack of bricks: "I'm not good enough to do this."
Whether I was proficient enough and sufficiently talented to be a digital or fine artist is now irrelevant. I knew that I needed an alternative course of study.
So, I looked all around the Union ballroom for a major which piqued my interests, and I found it. VCT allowed me to utilize my creative side just as much as fine art, yet it was something which I was better suited to. Art was only partly practical for me; VCT was the praetorian of pragmatic majors for me (regardless of how much sense that statement makes).
I guess that's what life is all about: compromises. We can't have everything we want.
I wanted to be a digital and fine arts major. Instead, I'm studying visual communications technology, with a bit of graphic design on the side.
Don't get me wrong; I picked the right major for what I want to do with my life. I've been working on some rather interesting projects so far this year, and I shudder with delight every time I get to make a vector drawing of a barbarian warrior wielding a bass guitar.
But if I could study anything I wanted to study - and I mean anything - then it would be art.
I love art, and when I say that, I mean it. I took four years of fine arts study in high school, and I worked with a wide variety of different media, from oil paint to screen printing.
Then, when I learned that BGSU offered a respectable art program, I knew what I wanted to study.
But I didn't know what I needed to study.
I'm no spectacular artist. Sure, I can whip out a decent self-portrait with some thick art paper and a handful of pencils, but my stuff pales in comparison to some of the absolutely phenomenal work on display at the art building.
When I walked through the art building during a tour of the University, the realization hit me like a sack of bricks: "I'm not good enough to do this."
Whether I was proficient enough and sufficiently talented to be a digital or fine artist is now irrelevant. I knew that I needed an alternative course of study.
So, I looked all around the Union ballroom for a major which piqued my interests, and I found it. VCT allowed me to utilize my creative side just as much as fine art, yet it was something which I was better suited to. Art was only partly practical for me; VCT was the praetorian of pragmatic majors for me (regardless of how much sense that statement makes).
I guess that's what life is all about: compromises. We can't have everything we want.
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