Words By Jill Risberg, she/her, @jillrisberg_
Graphic By Marley Crawford, she/her, @marmarcrawcraw
I attended one of those 6A, ultra-competitive, suburban Texas high schools. The kind of school that places first in every UIL event and appeals to upper-middle-class families. A school that sends a huge chunk of their graduating classes to The University of Texas at Austin.
My high school environment was rigorous. The majority of students either got to school early or stayed late, were involved in some form of ACT test prep, and regarded B’s as failures. Being one of those students myself, when things got especially exhausting or stressful—as they often did—my mom would say, “well at least you’ll be prepared for college!”
Prepared proved to be an understatement. During my first semester as a theatre major, my classes were easy, I was rarely stressed and I was astonished at how much free time I had. Compared to high school, life was a cakewalk. Since that first semester, my workload has gotten more difficult. I added an English major, joined some student organizations, and started taking heavier course loads. However, my art classes, particularly those that are project-based, have remained unchallenging.
The majority of my creative projects—be it a play script, a directed scene, or an acting performance—have earned perfect grading scores. No noted flaws and no point deductions. I like a good grade as much as the next person, but I can recognize when I’m getting more than I deserve. The perfect grade doesn’t bother me so much as what it stands for: a 100% means there is no way to make the submitted art better. No way to convey my message more clearly, make my plot richer or improve my basic technique.
Of course, I do not think students should be penalized for taking creative risks or creating art that does not fit their professors’ personal tastes, but I itch for some competition and rigor. Grades aside, I want feedback that not only compliments what I’m executing well, but points to weak areas and offers suggestions for improvement.
I want a learning environment that challenges me, and I am certainly not alone.
After speaking to students from a variety of creative, project-based majors, I found that people all across campus are craving more critique. Leah Blom, a sophomore radio-television-film and visual art double major, attributes the issue of unfulfilling feedback to an overprotective environment and a fear of hurting students’ feelings.
“The environment is very coddling,” she says. “If there are legit critiques, they are very passive. Professors try to build you up any way that they can, which might work for some people, but not everyone.”
Her feelings are shared by recent radio-television-film and playwriting graduate Erik Martinez, who explains his theatre classes prioritized creating a safe space over cultivating an environment for rigor or critique. He says, “I think people think that [negative feedback] will make the environment not safe anymore.”
Martinez frames the conflict creative classes face perfectly. Do you create a safe space for unbounded creation and expression? Or do you choose to take away the safety net for the sake of constructive criticism?
Opting for the former of these two options is understandable. Professors do not want to be the reason someone puts down their paintbrush forever. Moreover, art is subjective. By avoiding negative feedback altogether, professors eliminate the possibility of discrediting a valid artistic expression that they themselves may not resonate with.
Although I understand their reason for doing so, I argue against the usefulness of the hyper-sensitive approach many professors take. If students are choosing to major in a subject it means they want to learn and grow. They are not paying for the encouragement they can get from their parents, but rather for opinions and critiques. Carina Ramirez, sophomore acting major, points out “I feel like I’m not getting enough feedback from the professors…they are the working professionals.” She is right, and it is out of trust in and respect for the staffs’ professional status that students long for more substantial critiques.
The lack of feedback in Ramirez’s classes may be due to her sophomore status. As a sophomore myself, I considered that more rigorous critique could come with time. Martinez, who has received both a degree from the Moody College of Communication and the College of Fine Arts expresses that, “I think the higher level you go, the critiques become a little bit better…towards the end, in my higher up classes, I started getting some of the critiques I wanted.”
While the notion of gradually increasing rigor offers some relief, I do not understand why there is a critique deficit in lower-level classes. Even in the most subjective artistic fields, there are basics to master and standards to learn. It was (allegedly) Picasso himself that said, “learn the rules like a pro so you can break them like an artist.” Ideally, lower-level classes should implement mindful critique to help students learn and master basic artistic rules. From there, upper-level classes could be safe spaces for experimentation, rule-breaking, and expression.
As Blom noted in an earlier quote, the way UT arts sequences operate might work for some people. Everyone comes into college at a different skill and confidence level and I do not want to discredit professors’ attempts to make arts education approachable. With this in mind, I want to clarify that I am only speaking from my own experiences and conversations when I claim that students want to be pushed harder. We are serious about our education and it is from a place of respect for the arts that we ask for more substantial, honest, and guiding feedback.
My classes have expanded my understanding of what arts education can be. They have given me the freedom to explore what excites me and have taught me that my work as an artist is inseparable from my condition as a human. My art classes have made me a confident artist, and I am now ready to become a skilled one. I am ready to be questioned, challenged, and pushed to become better. So please, knock me down a peg. Tell me I suck and then, help me grow.
