A Boston Marriage

This was just published in herenb in an education supplement aimed at helping high school students figure out what’s what with post-secondary education. Hence the not-so-Boston-Marriageish tone.

Dear High School Student:

So, you’re going to graduate this year. Congrats. It’s an exciting time – perhaps just as exciting as the whole cap-and-gown deal is planning what’s next. More than past generations, you are being bombarded with messages about making sensible decisions about what, if any, further schooling you pursue. You’re being urged to learn a trade or, if you simply must attend university, take a subject that will earn you a job when you’re finished. You need to know not only what you’re going to be when you grow up, but how you’re going to get there as quickly as possible.

I’d like to take a moment to talk about a pursuit that may seem outlandish given this current emphasis on pragmatism: liberal arts degrees.

Yes, the liberal arts degree. A degree in which you go to university to gain general knowledge (with specializations in certain areas) in an attempt to develop your intellectual capabilities, sharpen those critical thinking skills, and broaden your understanding of the world, rather than to learn a specific vocation. It sounds so deliciously romantic – something privileged young geniuses from boarding schools do, probably while wearing cardigans and knit scarves. But really, in this day and age, who can justify four years of general studies to come out with a degree that doesn’t seem to be anything special or, more importantly, applicable?

I think by now, full disclosure on my part is required. I am the proud holder of a liberal arts degree. My particular post-secondary educational path was a typical parent’s nightmare: by the end of it, I’d earned a liberal arts degree in Theatre Studies (gasp!) and English (less shocking, but so generic!), with a smattering of Women’s and Gender Studies (huh?!) thrown in the mix. I wrote a thesis examining popular lady-culture via feminist theory. I also earned this degree at Canada’s most expensive university – Acadia – by virtue of student loans, student lines of credit, and many, many part-time jobs. Oh, and I took me half a decade to pull it off.

I come from a working-class family. For most of my life, my father worked with heavy machinery and my mom did clerical accounts work. They’re both incredibly smart and capable in ways that I have no understanding of, but came to appreciate – after angsty teenagehood passed, of course. But their life and work experiences led them to think I was pretty much insane for wanting to pay well over ten thousand dollars a year to study drama, especially since I did well in school and had an aptitude for many more practical subjects. Arguments about my future education were incredibly frustrating at the time, but I can now look back and see that they truly did have my best interests (meaning my ability to earn a living) in mind – though had anyone suggested that interpretation to me at the time, I probably would have slapped them across the face.

My parents’ concerns were legitimate and well-founded – but, it turns out, not prescient.

I’ve been out of university for just under four years now, and I have been gainfully employed ever since. Not just paying-the-bills employed, either – I’ve found work that is engaging, meaningful, and in line with my interests (which are writing and women’s advocacy, not exactly fields that are booming with employment opportunities). This isn’t in spite of my oh-so-impractical degree, but rather, because of it.

The fact is that even though bachelor’s degrees seem to be ubiquitous (Natasha Fatah of the CBC recently wrote “Today, a BA is like a high school diploma: it’s nothing special and everyone has one”), it still means I committed to a significant undertaking and saw it through – and that’s just how it looks on paper. In job interviews, I kick ass because of my self-confidence and ability to think on my feet – two traits largely attributable to my training in drama. In fact, I can’t recall a single job interview in which I haven’t mentioned my theatre training. When potential employers ask for “an example of a time when you went above and beyond to complete a task on time,” talking about balancing on top of a ladder to hang extremely heavy theatre lights at 2am because the show opens the next evening and the actors NEED light … this makes you sound really hardcore. Clearly, because of my degree I have a unique background to draw upon. My education also helped me develop a sense of self and the confidence to highlight my unique background as a strength, rather than view it as irrelevant.

The fact is that even the most seemingly impractical liberal arts degree, such as mine, is actually quite practical and helpful in earning a livelihood. So if a liberal arts degree appeals you, don’t write it off as an unrealistic option. Revel in being unsure of what you want to do when you ‘grow up’; explore different disciplines of study and focus on being well-rounded. I’d like to think that my little story proves that no matter what you study, it will be useful wherever you wind up – even if you study theatre.

Best wishes,

Beth