What I Did with My Bachelor of Fine Arts (BFA) Degree

"Art School." Two words that struck terror into the heart of my father, a man who had allowed that his obligation to his offspring extended not only to raising them to adulthood whole and unscathed but also to shelling out the money for them-and that would include me-to get college degrees. Of course, the point of getting a college degree is to better one's chances for gainful employment and success in life. My dad had been stung by his experience with my ex-brother-in-law, a part-time oil painter and full-time layabout whose idea of success in life was finding the right people from whom to cadge free room and board (and unfortunately it was us, for an embarrassing number of years).

"What are you going to do with an art degree?" my dad demanded. I am sure I had some brilliant retort (because, really, who doesn't at that age?), but my real motivation for seeking the welcoming arms of art school wasn't my talent or my, um, temperament, but truly because I could get a college degree without taking a single math or science course. What a deal! My mother, an art-school graduate herself and a spectacularly successful human being, probably soothed him with the thought that I would probably marry a nice smart boy who would provide, just as she did.

And what were my choices? I had smoked the PSAT and aced the SAT, and yet I had the less than stellar grades of a young person who preferred not to be bothered by something as uninteresting as school. The thirteen-page application to Bryn Mawr made me laugh as only a classic underachiever can laugh when confronted with Ivy League ambition. Into the trash it went, and quick as a wink, I was in Philadelphia with my portfolio in the admissions office at Moore College of Art, my mater's alma mater. They liked what they saw and I was ensconsed in the dorm the following year. After nearly getting kicked out on my cute behind that year for the whole less-than-stellar thing, I straightened up and managed to make it through in four years, picking up a BFA in Illustration.

Here's where things got less arty: Instead of taking advantage of my school's excellent placement program, I decided I couldn't waste my talent at a soul-stealing ad agency and determined I would work on a freelance basis instead. Yup, cue the long line of restaurant jobs. And yet, despite generally having to do something else to earn the daily bread, I have managed to make money from my art this whole time with the occasional freelance assignment, portraits for over 200 clients, and my degree has been parlayed finally into a teaching position-yes, of art-at our local community college. True, I'm still paying the bills doing something else in the daytime, but dammit, I had to produce my college transcript to get the position.

So that is what I did with my college degree. If you'd like a little art education, check out my "art"-icles, including "So You Wanna Be a Portrait Artist" and "Wacky Secrets of Proportion". Now you get to benefit from my education, too!