A lot of people like to make easy jokes about how art degrees are useless, or how art/humanities majors are going to be jobless forever, or that theyll be working at Starbucks for the rest of their lives. These jokes are really stale, and frankly pretty insulting.
Here are some real, practical things you can do with that art degree of yours.
1. Become one of those street-artists who draw amusing caricatures of celebrities. This is important work, and somebody needs to do it. How else is our society going to get paintings of Leonardo DiCaprio looking like a monkey?
2. Write a book or start a blog. The topic? How to Make Money as an Art Student. The delicious irony is that youll be making money off of other starving artists if your book/blog actually does well.
3. Go into denial. Hide your diploma. Just ignore the past 3-5 years of your life, pretend it never happened. Doesnt it feel good to be 18 again? 🙁
4. Use your degree to wipe the jobless tears from your jobless eyes.
5. Make a dope paper airplane out of it. Or a pirate hat. Or a little boat…
6. Get more schooling. Maybe you can convince yourself that getting a Masters or PhD would be a good idea? Itll only be a few more indecisive years of your life, and potentially tens of thousands of dollars.. Go on, what do you have to lose?
7. Teach English.
8. Tell really sad self-deprecating jokes around your friends. It wont ever get annoying, and theyll appreciate the fact that you accept reality.
9. Become an over-educated retail slave. At least when youre stocking shelves you can make them look all pretty, right? Also, you get to feel smug and superior around everyone, including customers and other staff members.
10. Act pretentious about it. Say things like, Job prospects arent nearly as important as all the growth and learning Ive gone through during my time at school – Im a better individual now! lol ya rite.
11. Become a huge sell-out. (Lets be real, this is probably what you were going to do anyways). You can probably massage your resume a bit and convince somebody, somewhere, that your degree in Eastern European Haiku Analysis translates into the perfect skillset for a commission-based salesperson.
With these 11 insider tips, youll be well on your way to putting that degree to good use! Did I miss anything? Feel free to comment below and let me know.