What Am I?

What do you want to do when you leave uni? That question that gets utters more and more as third year comes and (in not to long) goes. I'm a student doing a joint honours degree in Fine Art and Art History, so this immediatly raises questions as to what I am, and what I want to do. While it is not easy for any student who graduates and then has to decide upon their future, it seems increasingly difficult for arts students who don't appear to have any set career path in front of them.

This problem has many dimensions and many different angles and I don't pretend to be aware of them all and I certainly don't pretend to understand them all, but what I can say is that becoming increasingly obvious that any arts student has to be versatile. There has to be an openness about the arts almost as a given due to the nature of many arts based organisations, i.e. an open mindedness to dance, music, poetry amongst many others on top of the traditional fine arts. After this though I find that many graduates are trying several different roles in order to develop themselves, this includes writing, curating, selling as well as physical craft based skills. Many roles in the arts include several skills but also there comes the problem of lack of experience in a certain field, this is where the versatility comes into play. A Broad range of skill sets will allow for doorways to open without perhaps overly specific experience

All of this is well and good, but it doesn't answer the perhaps maybe initially simple small talk question of "what do you want to do when you finish uni?". Given my above thoughts I would say that any answer will probably just list off all my previous work experience as a specific field hasn't yet emerged, so perhaps in order to answer the question, the best answer might just be "Art stuff probably"...