Academia

...is so contrived.

I want to create. I want to make ART. I want to help others find their own path of creating ART.

But in order to that, I have to get a stupid degree to prove that I'm an Expert in Baroque music and the formal analysis of Beethoven piano sonatas and dialogues about dissonance written in seventeenth-century Italian?

I can't criticize that which I haven't experienced, can I? I have to finish this degree, don't I? I have to learn and regurgitate all of these details, right?

But...at what point do I get to be the judge of what I should learn? When do I get to spend time on My Craft, the ART I want to create? At what point can I say, "fuck you guys, I know better"? Will I ever reach that point? Does that point even exist? It's not that I don't want to learn, but I'm neglecting those things I want to learn for the sake of the things I have to learn.

I've been here for so long.