BA Blogs - Aisling Creedon
My name is Aisling Creedon. I’m a 24-year old English graduate, currently studying for an MA in creative writing. I’m passionate about the environment and baking and blog about them at www.tescotermination.blogspot.com and www.thoughtsforoli.blogspot.com respectively.
There are eight words I wouldn’t care if I never heard again: “What are you going to do with that?”
It’s a question you will have to get very used to answering if, like me, you make the choice to do a BA, especially in the creative arts. But it’s one I no longer dread, because I have learned that the most effective way to defend your choice to study the arts is to be proud of it, and be proud of yourself.
After much deliberation –first I wanted to do ethics, then journalism, then literature- I finally settled on English language with creative writing at the University of Huddersfield. If there’s one thing my two gap years taught me, it was that I wasn’t ready to grow up yet and I certainly wasn’t ready to stop learning. No one, at the age of eighteen or so, should be ready to give up learning about and building on what they love.
I spent the first year trying to tell people, the BSCers, my parents, etc. that English language is almost a science, it’s certainly very technical and factual. But really, it was the creative writing side of my degree that I should have been shouting about. To have the ability to be able to create something completely original, totally new, is incredible. To be able to translate your thoughts and emotions into something physical, audible or visual, is a gift and any course that fosters these talents in you is worth undertaking. Before I went to university, I had only the seeds of a writing ability, and none of the technique or depth of understanding to properly develop it. By the end, I was a writer. Not published, true, not earning millions, but our tutors never failed to remind us that being a writer is about the act, not what becomes of the product.
If you have ever found yourself sitting around waiting for inspiration to come and find you, let me tell you that there’s nothing so inspiring as an impending deadline! Whatever your field of interest, having tutors to satisfy, fellow students to impress and grades to obtain is a constant drive for your creative juices. Your output will soar, your portfolio will be busting at the seams, and what’s more you will have a concrete knowledge of how to work to deadlines, something that will be invaluable in your professional life.
Arts degrees don’t just give you the opportunity to create, but also to study the art world throughout history, to understand where your discipline evolved from, to know who its greatest practitioners are and how they have affected millions of lives. You’ll be familiar with the best examples of your art from every age. And more, you’ll see the best examples of tomorrow’s great art in creation by your classmates. You’ll see the inception of some truly wonderful ideas. You will be surprised by how inspired you will be by the achievements of those learning with you.
So is £9000 to much to pay for an arts degree? In my opinion, it’s too much to pay for any degree. No one can blame you and others at your stage of life for choosing something more vocational. Certainly you will have to work harder to achieve your professional dreams, and you’ll have to make a friend of rejection. But at long as the price is high, you have to make a decision about how important your art is to you. Art, to me, is a mirror, a reflection of the world the way it is or the way we want it to be or fear it could become. It is entertainment, knowledge, diversion and beauty. It is one of life’s only constants: we will always need to express through art what we carry inside. It’s up to you if you think that’s worth the money.
So what am I going to do with my BA?
Everything. Stand up and be proud!