Four Years, For What?

Go to University straight out of High School! Get a jump on your education so you can get a job faster! Plan for your future before you are even considered a legal adult!

What in the seven hells was I thinking?

In High School, I showed a talent for Art. I always loved to draw; it’s been that way since I was old enough to hold a crayon. Of course, my "talent" for art gave my teachers and parents a reason to nudge me in that direction for a job. Even my career aptitude tests back in tenth grade all listed jobs like illustrator, cartoonist, or tattoo artist. So, with no other careers or education pathways catching my interest, I decided to follow everyone’s advice.

I went into University for a Bachelor of Fine Arts. For four long, expensive years, I attended drawing, painting, and sculpting classes. I learned how to weld metal and to use a jig-saw. My clothes were cheap and covered in all colours and mediums of paint. I don’t think my hands had any moisture for four years after subjecting them to hours of clay or charcoal.

Not to give the wrong impression—I loved those four years.

My passion was finally paying off, and I ended up graduating with Honours without even having to try too hard. I loved my assignments, so I barely even considered them to be homework.

During those four years, I was constantly asked what I planned to do after I graduated. I had no clue. None what-so-ever. All those times I was awake at 2 in the morning and Googling "careers that use a BFA" or some other nonsense that ended up being no help and only stressed me out even more, innumerable. However, I remembered all the times I was told in High School—especially when I was Peer Tutoring a ninth grade art class—that I would make a great teacher.

The idea of being a teacher terrified me.

I hate public speaking, I do not like when I am responsible for other people, and the thought of having to bring my work home with me at the end of the day made me want to bash my head against the nearest wall.

So, of course, I began telling everyone I planned to go into teaching!

After using this as my answer to the "what are you going to do when you finish?" question, I began to believe the lies I was spewing. I convinced myself that I could become a teacher, and use my love of art and the 40 thousand dollar degree that I paid for, and teach art at the secondary level. That was my biggest mistake—I fell for my own lie.

I graduated from York University, enrolled in the University of Calgary under a Bachelor of Education, and promptly had a complete, emotional and mental, breakdown. I had a dorm room, I had already paid for my first semester of classes, and I was sitting in orientation with 300 other education majors when I realized that I fucked up.

Royally.

Imagine every cliché panic attack you see in the movies—I made it back to my dorm after orientation, collapsed onto my floor, and started to hyperventilate and cry like my entire world had just crashed down around me. I was seeing black spots, I wanted to puke, I could not breathe. I didn’t know what to do. I started texting friends and family stating that I had made a terrible mistake and I wanted out. Calls and texts flooded in because I was a genius and blurted out to everyone I know that I just spent a couple thousand dollars for nothing.

I didn’t even stop to think about maybe or give it a shot. I wanted to flee from that school and never look back.

It took some doing, and many phone calls from people trying to talk me out of it, but I got my money back, moved out of my dorm, and fell into a mild depression because my four years of stating I would be a teacher had blown up in my face in the most catastrophic display. I think my mother was about to have me checked into a mental institution—which probably had something to do with my brief debate about joining the RCMP (Royal Canadian Mounted Police).

I was the passive one. The one who would just get through school, not really picky about anything. The first big decision I made was to toss a four year BFA out the window because teaching was literally my only option that would actually keep a roof over my head and food on my plate. I was in debt, I needed a job, and I had nothing to show for all of my work except for a piece of paper that no one cared about.

Yeah, let’s convince kids in High School to decide their futures when they're 15-years-old. Seriously, you need to know what University program you are choosing by that time, because you need to take certain classes in High School in order to actually make it into the program. Adults are asking 15-year-old kids to know what they plan to do with the rest of their lives.

And it had better be the rest of your life, because that’s how long it’ll feel like when you’re paying off thousands of dollars in debt. I know some people who just keep racking up their debt because they never want to stop getting loans. If they just keep going to school, they won’t have to worry about paying it back.

Yeah, fool proof plan you've got there.

Thankfully, it only took me a month of leaving school before I found my next option, the one I wish I had known about when I was leaving High School for four years and 40 thousand dollars down the drain.

Massage Therapy.

I mean, I painted enough naked people during University. I guess the next plausible step would be touching them?

Before the program actually started, I had doubts about that, too. I took a Natural Science course in University and it was the only D I had ever gotten in my life. How was I going to succeed in a career that required you to know all of the muscles of the human body? To know bones and systems, functions and reactions?

All it took was reading the first few chapters of my textbooks and I was hooked.

The job that excites me, the school that I actually look forward to doing, it is so far removed from what I went to University for that people who look at my resume honestly do not know what to make of it. The Number of times I mention being in school for massage, then telling them I have a Bachelor of Fine Arts, always brings forth the funniest double-takes I’ve seen to this day.

That’s how I wasted four years of my life. Sure, I can still use the BFA for art on the side, but I could have improved my skills by watching YouTube videos for all the help that my professors and teaching assistants offered. I went into the BFA program expecting a career. All I had in the end was debt, and a piece of paper.

At 18, I became a University student.

At 22, I became a University drop-out.

At 23, I became a Spa Practitioner, and am presently enrolled in my second year to become an official Massage Therapist.