A New Skill

My friend Becca had encouraged my suitemate and I to sign up for this free paint night in the union because it claimed it would “de-stress.” I had so much fun with my friends painting and I had forgotten what it felt like. The instructor was kind and clearly knowledgable, and the makeshift art class was doing sunsets. She said no one had to follow her instruction so I immediately painted what I wanted, so I painted sunflowers and I was the only one to go “against the grain.” When I was younger, in Elementary I used to receive art scholarships to a performance camp on Long Island named Usdan for my drawing and painting skills. One day when I was younger someone in my family told me that me doing art was useless because artists don’t make money till they’re dead. She claimed it was better to be a doctor or a lawyer, that is where the money was. I was only ten and that was enough for me to stop drawing immediately and focus on other things I was interested in, things I would believe would make me more money in my lifetime.
She made me believe that art in society was so useless and I only recently rediscovered my love for art last summer. I have come to realize my family member was wrong, art and creativity does have a place in my educational journey and I can see that now from it’s place in GLOBE. There is a place that asserts the goal of “creativity and creative thinking.” I realized that without creativity, a great deal of inventions or movements we revere today would not be here. Without those who “go against the grain” or the status quo, society would be worse off. Without artists like Monet and Renoir who rebelled against the traditional painting techniques of the “masters” we would not have many Impressionist masterpieces. Without early literary rebels such as James Joyce and Virginia Woolf with modernism and their new “stream of consciousness” technique that became classic novels I studied in AP Literature. Without the visions of Martin Luther King and Susan B. Anthony. Without the bravery to break the traditional mold where would society be? 
Creativity and academic greatness can mix to create a better tomorrow. Creativity and education seem to be in a partnership together as well, one that surely has a permanent place in the classroom. 

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