Follow your bliss

Newsweek recently ran a gallery titled “The 13 most useless majors from philosophy to journalism.” Predictably, the arts fared badly. That’s OK, though, because Narrative Science is a company that has devised an artificial intelligence algorithm for computers to write news articles. (The lack of a byline suggests that the Newsweek piece was itself written by a computer.)

It’s a tough climate for the creative among us. Adding to the implicit denigration of wasting humanity’s precious time with such frippery as music and storytelling, student debt continues to far outpace inflation, hemming the prospects of even hard-nosed arts grads.

But perhaps the reality is that things are simply changing, and arts majors can still create for themselves a more advantageous position than that which the doom-screaming headlines suggest.

Conversations with working professionals at Portland State in the seemingly unrelated fields of music and English revealed common directives for job-seeking arts majors.

Build your brand

English Professor Brett Campbell is a freelance writer and editor who contributes regularly to The Wall Street Journal, Willamette Week and too many other publications to mention. A point that he repeatedly stressed was the entrepreneurial nature of writing today. In short, writers need to do their own marketing. They need to build a brand using online media and social networking.

Professor Paul Collins, a published author of seven volumes of nonfiction and contributor and editor for McSweeney’s, majored in literature and doesn’t regret a thing. He pointed out that though electronic media has created a mess of new (often bad) content, it continues to create new opportunities—especially in the realm of self-promotion.

“The thing about electronic media [is] people’s blogs didn’t replace magazines,” Collins explained. “But that said, it did open up opportunities for some bloggers to break out.”

Traditionally, to be published, one had to get close to the big six publishing companies—Hachette, HarperCollins, Macmillan, Penguin, Random House and Simon & Schuster—to get noticed. Now a good online presence, especially via social media and blogging, allows writers to self-promote.

Seniors Carl Moe and Eva Cummins, both professional singers and soloists in the Department of Music, said that the basic fact about plying any art is that “you are your own small business.”

Hustle

Cummins and Moe endorsed a lower-tech method of self-promotion for artists: busking.

“Lots of people will just record a CD and go busk in the park. You get exposure because your contact info is on your CD,” Moe said. “I know people who’ve made $400 in a day singing in the park.”

He told a story about a woman he knew who busked in New York City subways and was hired by the personal assistant of a wealthy arts aficionado for an exceedingly handsome sum.

“It’s all about placing yourself in positions to be able to take advantage of opportunities,” Moe said.

Cummins offered an anecdote of her own: “This last fall, I got an opportunity that involved learning to sing an hour’s worth of calypso music. This isn’t what I’ve been studying. I had no idea how to do this, but it’s a decent gig, and it’s with some people that I’d like to know my name. So I learned, and I turned out to be decent at it.”

Collins said that those who wanted to get involved at a publishing house should be willing to take on just about any job.

“Someone will move into editing by getting an entry level job, and it’s not necessarily in editing,” he said. “A lot of people I know in publishing, they started doing publicity or something like that.”

Collins encouraged job seekers to get to know people in their desired field more informally.

“Ask somebody out for coffee,” he said. “If you’re only interacting with people in your field when you’re asking for a job, that’s a fairly stressful way to get to know people in the field, and most of the time you’re not going to get any information out of them because they’re trying to get information out of you.”

As Greg Flores, associate director of Career Services, said: “If you go talk to five different people at five different companies, you can go back to one and say, ‘I’ve talked to all these different people; I have a sense of the scene, of the field.’ That’s a powerful statement that you’ve done your homework.”

Campbell added that local news editors he’s spoken with revealed that they are looking for “writers who can be entrepreneurial, who can write 200-word bits and also those who can build a big story, the in-between stuff they want less of, that used to be the traditional magazine feature. They also want people who can handle public databases. They want people who can handle video and audio.”

Staff may be shrinking, but the need for talented writers who understand the basics of building a story remains high.

Use those critical thinking skills

Collins pointed out that “the liberal arts are giving you a set of critical thinking skills that apply in more than one area,” so the possibilities are really much broader than the title of the degree suggests.

Many arts majors go on to study law or go into marketing, he said.

What’s more, getting a job often comes down to creatively representing oneself to prospective employers.

Campbell said that although getting onto a news staff is increasingly difficult, it is a better time than ever for the creative to make their own way.

“The changing economy is putting more of a premium on creativity and less on formula, and that’s something you learn in the liberal arts,” he said.

Flores said that “getting a job is about being able to tell a story about yourself. Being able to say, ‘I’ve done these things,’ is a lot better story than, ‘I’ve taken this class.’”

This also means that experience is invaluable, whether that experience is volunteering, a student job or interning. If you’re graduating and haven’t done an internship, Flores says that you could still do a paid internship, which get posted regularly.

Weigh the costs and benefits of grad school

This may seem obvious, but unless one has a career in mind that requires it, graduate school might best be kept in reserve as a hedge. The days of gratuitous over-education seem to be coming to a close.

For aspiring writers at least, experience may prove to be a more useful investment than going more deeply into debt, according to Collins.

Collins said that while the skills learned in an English program are certainly helpful, “one of the nice things about writing—and I’ll scandalize writing programs by saying this—is that no one ever asks what your major was.”

On the other hand, Collins said that a degree in English, with its focus on critical thinking, can be the basis for getting into a whole host of graduate programs.

Cummins and Moe agree that music’s emphasis on mathematics and theory means that similar post-graduate opportunities exist for those majors. For Moe at least, the cost of going to an expensive graduate school may be worth the pricetag.

“The Manhattan School of Music, they only offer about 50 percent in merit-based student aid, tuition costs $36,000, and living in place like that…say, the $50,000 that you accrue in debt, you can pay that off in two or three contracts. Are you going to get contracts that big coming out of a different school that maybe didn’t cost as much?” Moe shrugged. “Maybe.”

Make yourself happy

Flores said that what’s wrong with media stories like the one in Newsweek is not only that arts majors often end up elsewhere in the work force but that there is the question of personal values.

“Most people who go into music, art, theater—they aren’t doing it to get rich; they’re doing it because they love it,” he said.

Campbell has no reservations toward the possibility of having a satisfying career in the arts:

“I know it sounds clichéd, and it’s not practical, but I still think you should figure out what you love and figure out a way to make that happen. It’s more possible now to make your own way than it ever has been. If you’re good enough, you’ll find a way to make it happen.”