Slow down and enjoy the arts courses
I have taken almost every single infamous University of Ottawa elective course an undergraduate student can enroll in.
Drugs 101, Canadian Children’s Literature, Elementary Italian I, and, of course, Witchcraft, Magic, and Occult Traditions. Last semester, I continued my tradition of rounding out my semester with fun electives by enrolling in ART 1900: Drawing from Life Fundamentals with Professor Andrew Morrow.
I have nary an artistic bone in my body but had always wanted to draw and was looking for a creative break from my international development readings and policy work. Instead, Life Drawing became one of the most intellectually and emotionally challenging courses of my undergraduate career and redefined how I understand knowledge, discomfort, and even failure.
I do well in classes and I am not used to being so abysmally terrible at something. I did not have any illusions that the class would be easy, but I underestimated how much anxiety the class would bring.
After two weeks of leaving the class halfway through, I admitted my feelings to my professor. Choosing to be vulnerable seemed to be the best course of action since I was not going to get better by skipping class. He reiterated that he was looking to see how much effort we put into our assignments and I should stop wasting time comparing my abilities to my peers. By staying, I began to understand the humility and patience that real learning requires.
Right when my discomfort had begun to subside, Professor Morrow introduced our final project, “Necessary Stupidity”. We were not required to use the methods we learned in the class! Instead, we were told to just draw something we brought or an object from the room. Every few minutes, Professor Morrow would introduce an intervention such as changing your drawing utensil or using your non-dominant hand. The point was to engage with uncertainty and disruption to create something new and interesting.
What felt like my worst nightmare came to life–a final with no rules–became a lesson to stop entering challenges with pre-determined solutions. There are an infinite number of ways to approach a challenge. It was a concept that we debate in my development lectures but is entirely different to embody. Like art, meaningful engagement in development–or any field–requires creativity, adaptability and resisting one-size-fits-all mentalities.
I am no stranger to studying the benefits for arts-based approaches for knowledge co-creation. Participatory Development Theory emphasizes the importance of participatory strategies to address issues such as gender-based violence, youth-engagement, or climate justice. Scholarship notes that participatory art is an increasingly popular and practical way to center marginalized groups while fostering collaboration.
Building on this, I designed a body mapping and community theatre rights-based education experiment for youth in El Salvador for my fourth-year development issues in Latin America seminar final. The project utilized arts tools to help adolescents individually and collaboratively engage with themes of sexual violence, consent, and stigma. These tools support different learners and personality types to participate in both knowledge co-creation through storytelling and performance, and knowledge dissemination, through viewing and discussion. Thanks to my deeper understanding of the arts, I was able to understand the vulnerability and discomfort these tools demand in a way that cannot be grasped from reading a theoretical paper.
I love studying international development but some of the most meaningful lessons of my degree have come from the electives outside my major.
Recently, CBC reported that Ontario Premier Doug Ford suggested that students should stop taking “basket weaving” courses calling out disciplines that are perceived to lack economic value. But if everyone just studied what was profitable at the time, we would lose the diversity of abilities and perspectives that sustain human civilization. Education is not just about productivity but about engaging with your unique talents and interests to offer something to society.
If uOttawa offered basket weaving I suspect it would be quite popular. Students yearn for a hobby that does not involve just scrolling their phones.
If you have the opportunity to take a class outside of your comfort zone, I urge you to do so. Our class was filled with students from Engineering to English and it was a complete judgment free zone. All the criticism and negativity I experienced stemmed from my own insecurity. There is something truly liberating about choosing to be completely, even comically bad at something but have the courage to try anyway.
