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In response the person I heard today putting down her friend who is dreaming of becoming a music teacher (because it is a "low-level and intellectually-unchallenging life-style...he can reach higher than that!")...
Please please PLEASE be aware, it takes an INSANE amount of courage and hard work to become a person who is dedicated to the arts, and is in no way easy or a "stupid career path!!" Art/Music students (the dedicated ones, at least) are just as hard working as the students in any other major, and I'd even go out on a limb and say that in most cases they are even more so. Where else will you find people staying awake to work for over 72 hours straight, living off of coffee and sleeping on campus (ok, besides you engineer guys...)? In most cases, artists/musicians/actors don't even have much straight-forward direction to follow (like textbooks to read and write papers on, or tests to study for and pass) - they're relying on pure creativity, improvisation, and self-motivation to produce at their highest possible level (which is tough when you're usually starving, lol!)...it takes an enormous amount of determination. Anyone who's aware of the real world right now and has a brain (left OR right sided ;) ) realizes that the job market isn't exactly inspiring - it definitely takes some extra guts to pursue an art-related career when the country is cutting back on any liberal spending. There's a growing number of people in the Arts in Medicine program who make children feel better and suddenly become talkative on a daily basis, after doctors give them all sorts of medications that don't relieve their pain and stress. I firmly believe that if magic's real, it exists in art. And if anything, I also think that every artist/musician I've met was just as happy as anyone else around them, if not more so! :) This has probably been my first and only FaceBook rant (yeey!), but I feel like it needed to be said!
Also, backupz!: http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702304402104579149060054918936?mod=trending_now_1