Update and why it’s important to acknowledge your stress.
I started off this art blog posting on a lesson by lesson basis for people curious about art school. Â This semester, I had the genius idea of taking on 4 Studio Classes. Â
What does that actually mean? Â
Studio courses are usually only taken 1-2 at a time.  They are classes where a large project is due about every 2 weeks.  Think about the stress you get just before a mid-term when you have a paper also due.  Unlike a paper or a test, you can’t just BS a 3 foot by 4 foot painting overnight or create 5 matching ceramic pieces from scratch by going over your notes one last time. Â
That project every 2 weeks is on a per class basis, over the course of 16 weeks a minimum of 32 projects could be due. Â Add in required attendance to campus events and being hit with a very rough medical issue, it made for a very stressful semester.
Taking all of that into consideration, I did not make any posts while in the thick of the stress storm. Â I felt giving a stress addled evaluation of the experience would not accurately portray how valuable the overall experience actually is.
If you would have asked me anytime between February and May about art school being worth it, I’m not sure I could have answered in an honest and objective way.  I was constantly obsessed with my grades and not really sure what I was accomplishing by working as hard as I was on each of my projects. Â
Now that the semester is over, I would say that it’s absolutely worth it.  I have a set of skills that I had not possessed prior to the start of the year.  Would I put myself through that same semester again?  Absolutely not.  I would have taken fewer high stress classes and put in at least one class where I would tend to not feel as pressured overall.
The pressure itself paired with crippling anemia actually caused my grades to suffer.  It wasn’t much, I went from a high As to low Bs overall, but that meant there were some extremely low individual grades along the way.
I know that getting those lower grades added to my overall stress as my scholarships are GPA based. Â There are many students in similar situations and I want to reach out to them. Â Maybe I can even help prevent someone from being in the same situation. Â So here are some tips from my own experience.
 Know your stress threshold - Know how much you can handle safely.  Shoot for a notch lower.  You never know what can happen over the course of a semester.
 Don’t ignore fatigue - We all make excuses for being tired.  There is a difference between being tired from an all-nighter and being continually exhausted.
Take care of your health - Most colleges require you to either have your own or enroll in their insurance plans while attending classes.  Take advantage of this.  Talking to a healthcare professional can help make sure that your symptoms aren’t pointing to something worse.  ( In my case, a blood disorder paired with anemia.) Â
These are also tips I would give for general advice as an adult. I know you can feel trapped in certain situations (job, school, relationships). Â Do not let your situations define you as a person. Â
Not really sure if this will help anyone, but I felt the need to put it out there.
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