Generation Magazine

A reflection by Eric Fortier

It is a wet and dreary Monday morning in March. I’m walking out of the basement of Alumni Arena—where my first class is—starting my journey across this immense campus to my next class in NSC.

The hope of spring—coupled with the string of mild, sunny days we’ve had in the past week—has inclined many to dust off their flip-flops and sport their favorite T-shirts. For four years I have been watching this strange behavior. I still get a kick out of watching the underdressed masses, hunched over themselves, holding back the shivers, fog bellowing from their mouths as they collectively mumble “fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck,” under their breaths.

Today is a particularly good show, because it’s raining and cold. I’m smirking under the hood of the winter jacket I opted to wear this morning. It was a choice that seemed fairly easy for a senior faced with a pallet of far more difficult and life-changing decisions—decisions I must make as I prepare to finish this chapter in my life, dominated by the institution of higher education, and the predispositions of collegiate expectations. I’m not much for clichés, but one cannot help but reflect on the experience of college and ask the questions, “What have I learned?” “Was it all worth it?” and my favorite, “What the hell do I do now?”

Usually, I make the journey from Alumni to NSC outside, because it’s less crowded and faster during the winter months. Growing up in Western New York gives you a special ability to endure the cold with a grungy “bring it on” attitude that—along with Bills, Sabres, beer and chicken wings—is one of the binding fabrics of this community.

However, today I am not particularly apt to drench myself for the sake of saving a few minutes. I step out of the rain and enter Lockwood, joining the stream of students following the intricate maze of hallways and tunnels that conveniently leads from one end of the campus to the other. Not surprisingly, many others are sharing my resolution to stay dry today. It’s packed. I slowly make my way down the long hallway in Baldy Hall, looking out the windows to my left at the Alfiero Center, UB’s hot spot for up-and-coming assholes.

I came into this university as a business major, based entirely on the fact that I had no idea what I wanted to do in life, and business seemed like a reasonable, general area of study. Besides, UB expects you to have a pretty good idea about what you want to do by the time you take your first steps onto campus. This makes it easier for them to funnel you through the system with greater efficiency, and keeps their filing cabinets neat and tidy.

My first semester was a disaster. I probably should have put a little more thought into my choice of college. I didn’t even apply anywhere else. I was an average student, with average grades and SAT scores that wouldn’t be considered outstanding. I spent some extra time on the essay to be attached with the application, and managed to convince them that even though my grades did not shine, I was a smart and unique-thinking individual who deserved to develop my mind among others like me at a prestigious university such as UB (sounds good, eh?). Apparently, this buttered them up enough to accept me, on the condition that they monitor me closely for the first two years to make sure I wasn’t just another fuck-up infecting their system (they call it the ACE program).

In my first year, I didn’t give them much reason to think otherwise, but I got by. But I was not happy in the School of Management. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing in these classes: teaching us to climb the ladder (i.e. stepping on other people’s backs), how to reach the top at any cost. Let me repeat—at any cost (more UB alumni at the top means the School of Management looks better, and that increases enrollment). The “ethics” they taught were just pretty perfumes to cover the stench of their transgressions. But they couldn’t fool me; I knew they were doing something smelly. I was resentful because I didn’t fit in, and my grades suffered.

I began to wonder if UB really was the place for me. I had read about UB and heard others’ experiences—and from what I heard it sounded great—but I never even visited the campus before I got accepted, and I live 15 miles away. I had no desire to leave Western New York. My life at home was fine—great actually. My family is cool, and my parents gave me a lot of freedom rather than taking it away, thus removing any of that normal late-teenage urgency to fly the coop. I had all my friends here, and a long-term girlfriend, so leaving did not seem worthy of the money I would spend. Since the other collegiate options in this area were not any more appealing, I decided to stick it out.

There were things I did like about this place. The faculty here, for the most part, is top notch. My mind was opened to many new ideas, concepts, problems, theories and philosophies. My first year writing teachers, Mike Hurst and Kevin Arnold, deserve a lot of credit. They encouraged and inspired original thought, and pushed me to use my natural gift for writing as a way to organize these thoughts and help them creatively flow onto paper. I was successful in these classes—I found them easy and enjoyable, and felt great pride for a completed work. I started to think I could write for a living. But I found the English department somewhat intimidating, and as much as I liked writing, it didn’t seem like the path to an English degree would be too fun. I was also worried about the practicality of my degree, and I thought an English degree wouldn’t get me any farther than I could throw it.

I had the same feelings about music. My father is an avid musician, still jamming and gigging at 54 years old. Every Friday night when I was younger, I would fall asleep to a rock ‘n’ roll lullaby, where the music drifting up from the basement became a jukebox in the background of my crazy dreams. I have a natural ear for music and can pick up on everything I hear, even though I can’t read or write it very well. I took a basic music theory class as an elective in my third year, thinking it would be a breeze because of my musical upbringing. I ended up getting a D.

I have since followed in my father’s footsteps. I have been playing guitar since he first gave me one before I had the training wheels off my bike. I’ve been playing bass in bands since I was 15. Music became the only relatable and comprehensible constant in my life. Unfortunately, the music community I felt comfortable in was totally different than the academic music community. Just like English, I couldn’t choose music as my area of study because of the technicalities that I couldn’t come to terms with. I would not be able to sit in front of a piece of music and play it for an audition, even though I could sit with a group of musicians on stage and immediately pick up on the feeling of the music. I stuck my loves for music and writing in my back pocket, knowing they would always be there.

As I continue my journey across campus, I’ve made it through O’Brien, across the bridge to Norton and into Capen Hall, the beating heart of this university. I walk past the advising offices for the ACE program, remembering the times I visited (mostly because it was required, but also because I was open to any sort of advice or guidance at the time). After my first year, I dropped out of the School of Management and claimed an undecided major, which, at that point, I determined wouldn’t be as bad as I originally thought. I could spend the next year finishing gen ed requirements and dabbling in a little bit of everything in hopes of gaining some perspective about what I really wanted to do. I started to feel better about my studies. I was motivated by the pursuit of knowledge, and I had a greater sense of independence. I suppose this was also around the time I started smoking pot on a regular basis.

I smoked the funny grass for a few years before. But it was rookie smoking—you know, sit around with your friends on the weekend, laugh at stupid shit, eat a bunch of junk and pass out watching “The Wall.” By the time my second year came around, marijuana had taken on a different role in my life. I began to realize that, if utilized correctly, pot was a vehicle for driving my thoughts and creativity into a whole new dimension. Here I was at this huge university, absorbing all sorts of input: world history, economics, philosophy, art, poetry, business, science. The more I opened myself to pot, the more I was able to make universal connections between everything, developing a greater understanding of life. Not only did I understand life more, I was appreciating it on a level that I never had before—appreciating everything for what it was, good or bad, small or large, because I knew everything was all part of a great balance.

Pot gave me the ability to step back and see the bigger picture, and in doing so, I found a peaceful serenity that nestled deep in my soul and has stayed there. Contrary to the popular stereotype, pot did not make me lazy or unmotivated. It made me want to get out and experience everything—experience life. I wanted to do more, to think more. I am thrilled by both physical and mental adventures, and marijuana enabled an intimate relationship to develop between my education and me. Every day at UB since then has been a mental adventure.

Unfortunately, UB’s community of stoners is not one that exists above water. It’s not in-your-face, there are no drum circles popping up spontaneously in the field (though I did find one in the Commons the other day—one of the few I’ve ever seen on campus—and they were great), no drug rugs and no dreadlocks (any sight of these stoner characteristics is rare among a sea of leggings, flat-brimmed caps, Ugg boots and Timberlands). At first, I was disappointed. It was one more thing that alienated me from everyone else. I had no one to share in my enlightenment. But I realized something—UB is the type of place that harbors a new breed of stoners, what some might consider the Nuevo-hippie.

In my generation, the hipsters reject the stereotypical baggage of the “hippie” label that developed in the ’60s. A lot of people at UB are straightedge. We are a straightedge school with clean-cut expectations for student conduct and behavior. The Nuevo-hippies have acknowledged this, though not in defeat or accepted discrimination. It’s more about knowing where you are and accepting that—in the words of the comedian Lenny Bruce—“You still gotta do business with these folks.” Nuevo-hippies don’t feel the need to wear their counterculture on their sleeves because making that point—the need to visually express themselves in tacky ways in tribute to the culture—is not as important as the big picture, the individual relationship, the mental adventure of a higher education (no pun intended). I grew comfortable with this, knowing that there were others out there like me, maybe not so visibly apparent except for the occasional pair of red, glossy eyes I made contact with, sharing a nod of approval and understanding—a brief moment of companionship that I don’t often experience around here on that level.

I continued to float along, taking things in stride. Around this time, I made an innocent purchase that ended up influencing my direction, ultimately becoming my concentration of study in my third and fourth year. I bought a small digital point-and-shoot camera for fun—for documenting times with friends and family and such. I started aiming the camera at anything I saw that was even minutely interesting. Photography became a way for me to take all the knowledge and universal connections I grabbed from my education and translate them into a visual experience—a way for me to materialize the looking glass through which I saw the world.

I took an introductory photography class as an elective and began my life as an art student. I was completely ignorant to the normal process of advancement through the art program. For some reason, I was allowed to take two upper-level photography classes before I took the introductory art foundation classes, and struggled a bit because I wasn’t on the same level as my peers. But I enjoyed what I was doing. Soon, I upgraded to a digital SLR camera, and even picked up a job with a local photographer, shooting action photography for youth sports around Western New York. I still have this job. It has given me the hands-on experience I would have never learned in the classroom, learning my way around the camera, learning the market for photography in the real world.

I made it through Capen, down the stairs into Talbert, and into the bridge connecting it to NSC. I am met by a swarm of students—heading in the opposite direction—who have just been let out of their enormous lecture halls. They are shuffling their feet, their heads slowly swaying left to right like metronomes pacing out the beat of their impossibly slow tempo as they all try to funnel through the double doors—a fire hazard for sure. I must endure with the perseverance of a salmon swimming upstream to reach breeding grounds as I attempt to wedge my way through. I finally make it and take a seat where I always do—in the back, at the top of the massive, stadium-esque classroom, looking down upon hundreds of seats filled by hundreds of students.

I have never been intimidated by the large lecture setting, which is often criticized for its poor student/teacher connection. I don’t need to be spoon-fed my information. The large lectures at UB allow me to take what I need on a sliding scale of relevance that I can apply to the underlying principles of what is being taught. The lights dim and the giant projector flickering above my head beams onto the screen that towers behind the action figure-sized teacher. The glow of a hundred laptops stare back at me like oncoming headlights on the 190 (yes, we call it the 190—end of story). I see Facebook, Facebook, YouTube, Hulu, Facebook, ESPN, Facebook. Is anybody actually using these things to take notes? Oh yeah, that guy down there is. No, wait, he just switched over to Facebook.

Sometimes I wonder how much technology has improved the collegiate world. In fact, I think it has made it worse. Technology has certainly helped make distributing information more effective and convenient. But what is the point of putting Wi-Fi in classrooms? Social networking and texting have evolved into ways for students to exist in their own little bubbles of comfort. Before this technology, students may have been forced to communicate with the strangers around them (no, please no!). Fortunately, we have the ability to drift away and avoid these situations by gluing ourselves to our devices like they’re the most important fucking things in the world. This has completely changed the social landscape of colleges everywhere—the look, the feel, the ambient experience of higher education. There is a serious lack of true human connection between students. Coming to class seems pointless when most are content with watching a professor stream a lesson over the Internet, in the comfort of their safety bubble—a sad, scary thought indeed.

The class lets out and the rain has momentarily ceased, so I go outside and head all the way back to my next class in the CFA (a scheduling strategy I installed purposely to make myself more miserable). I walk back past Capen, watching all the passersby check themselves out in the long string of polarized windows adjacent to the Flint loop (you know you’ve done it, you’re not fooling anyone). I walk through Founders Plaza, past the highly criticized flowerpot sculptures, and wonder why they caught such a bad reputation. I think they are pretty cool, the way they bend perfectly to the one direction of the persistent northeastern wind coming off Lake Erie over Buffalo and the surrounding areas. It is a wind that stings in the winter, but is warm and inviting in the summertime—a wind that is part of this area’s character (credit Nina Leo here for teaching me the beauties of site-specific art).

By the time I make it to the Student Union, it starts to drizzle again. I pick up my pace and finally make it to the CFA. Ah, the CFA—home of UB’s (fine) arts program—an icon of my final two years here. Everybody there is struggling with the fact that they are art students in a school known for medicine, science and business. The feel of the building is one of frigid, bland emptiness that is about as inspiring as a hospital wing in the middle of Kansas. The white-walled hallways and classrooms have the aesthetic of a full-blown loony bin (many feel a bit loony from being here anyway).

However, despite the terrible atmosphere, there is a lot of good stuff: state-of-the-art computer labs, studios packed with great equipment, and a beautiful photo lab with full accommodations for both chemical and digital development and printing. The lab, and the photo department for that matter, is directed and headed by the man, the myth, the legend, Dan Calleri. Calleri, despite his seemingly bitter and serpentine demeanor, will always be there to answer questions and provide what is needed to accomplish artistic goals, offering advice and tricks of the trade to help solve problems—even inviting his students into his own home for a pancake breakfast every year (sorry to blow your cover, Dan).

In my third year, I was officially listed as an intended art major with a concentration in photography, and I was taking the foundation courses I skipped out on before. At one point, I found myself sitting there painting a color wheel and thinking about a tuition well spent. This was basic stuff, but it is how they weed out the students not cut out for the art program. I’m not saying I was the best, but it was enough to profess my basic knowledge and understanding for art. I still believe you can be a sub-par artist and get an art degree from this place. It is not terribly rigorous, and as long as you are doing the work and at least trying to inject some thought and originality into it, you can still by with at least a B.A. There is no portfolio review for a B.A, where there is for a B.F.A (Bachelor of Fine Arts). For the record, my degree is a B.A. Fine arts candidates, who usually expect to go on to pursue a master’s degree, are required to take more classes and submit their work to a governing body who will decide if it’s good enough. I have decided, at least for now, that it’s not in my best interest to pursue a master’s. I’m comfortable enough with my art that the little “F” in the middle of my B.A. was not worth the hassle.

I made out well in the foundation courses and continued to take more art and photography classes. These classes were mostly theoretical, preaching the concepts of continental philosophy that turn the wheels of this research-based university. Because of this, students are given more freedom to explore their own creativity and originality, as long as it applies to the underlying ideological foundation of the assignment. This is another point where the true artists are separated from the rest. It is easy to tell who is truly pushing the boundaries and working out a genuine relationship between their character, intelligence and skills. It is also easy to tell who is failing (or simply not trying) to overcome the struggle for originality.

This made the critique process painful. The good work was easy to talk about. The bad work usually led to silence. Most people are generally polite, and won’t do or say anything negative to another person, especially directly to his face. What most try to do in the presence of bad work is not talk about what’s “bad” or artistically lacking in it, they sit there and try to muster up something even remotely “good” to say about it—which usually ends up coming out sounding like bullshit. Only then will they take a pathetic stab at constructive feedback, discussing the “things they would have changed.” These are supposed to be critiques, not just pat-you-on-the-back-for-a-good-try sessions. There are only a few—and I mean a few—students who are completely honest. I am not one of them. Those who were ended up being chastised, and their honesty was misconstrued as ivory tower hogwash. I usually opted to keep my mouth shut, so yes, I was part of the problem. I became so disillusioned by the whole process over the past two years—so incredibly tired of seeing the same clichés and techniques in the art, hearing the same lingo over and over in the critique of this art (words like effective, strong, interesting, powerful and successful—to name a few—now make me want to grind out my teeth)—that biting my tongue and retreating back into my own mind seemed like the only way to escape.

Not that someone should be discouraged if they get a bad critique—all art students have been put up on the chopping block at some point. But the process is so political that it strips away the original intentions of art education. Young artists are supposed to learn how to open their minds to new ideas, think of interesting ways to materialize their interpretation of the world, become comfortable with re-evaluation and the ever-eluding possibility of change while maintaining confidence in their art, keep asking questions and seek answers, compare and contrast horizontally with peers who are going through the same thing, gain true understandings of their potential and, finally, to use all of this as a way to grow and nurture intellect, and aid in a greater understanding of themselves and the universe. In an academic setting, it is normal to impose these standards on the expression of art. Consequently, they become rules over time, and it is important to recognize when these rules cease to liberate and begin to govern. Then it is surely time to rewrite them. In the words of Albert Einstein, bureaucracy is the death of any achievement.

I have completed the routine of a day at UB, and I am heading home. With only a few weeks left, it’s hard to ignore the thought of walking away for the last time, on my way to bigger and better things. Seeing UB permanently in my rearview mirror is a thought that comes with mixed emotions. I am excited to move on. I am excited to get out and see the world, and to figure out just how I am going to contribute—to find my niche. I am tired of the academic setting, and I look forward to pursuing and enhancing my education on my own terms. At the same time, it saddens me to leave a place where I have grown and developed so much in the past four years.

For a while, I was bothered by the thought that I would leave with nothing more that a worthless art degree. I thought about it a lot, but eventually concluded that I am leaving with much more than I bargained for. I am leaving with a complete overhaul of self-awareness, self-appreciation, and self-consciousness. I am leaving with certainty in my monetary values—I have learned to resist the allure of vanity in lieu of what true happiness entails. I am leaving with the ability to break things down in order to see them for what they really are, all the while constantly questioning what this reality is. I am leaving with an openness to change that has eliminated the possibility of ever becoming idle and stagnant. I am leaving with a new vision, and a new way to expressively communicate this vision. I am leaving with weariness for emerging technologies that threaten to interfere with the nature and independence of the human body, mind and soul. I am leaving with a personal, unique understanding of the meaning of art (apart from the conventions and the widely accepted norms of the term), and the role it plays in my life and future. Most importantly, I am leaving with a complete trust in my ability to accomplish whatever it is I set out to do—to change the things I can and accept the things I cannot, to learn from my mistakes and to confide in the value of hindsight.

Far too often, degrees are treated like tickets for admittance into the workplace. Degrees are seen as receipts to acknowledge money spent on a specific education, nearly ensuring a job upon graduation. The shitty reality for this graduating class is that it’s a terrible time to graduate and try to get a job with the shape of the economy and job market.

The way I see it, my degree is a ticket to the world. It’s a constant assurance that affords me the ability to explore every opportunity and to take on every challenge. It’s my confidence in the mystery of running down a crazy dream—if I don’t at least try to pursue my passion for music, photography and writing, collectively or separately, I will then have failed myself. I know as long as I have my guitar, my camera and a pen to write, I will at least have a roof over my head and bread on my table.

A friend always tells me, “If you’re doing what you love, the money will come to you.” If it turns out I can fill my wallet with the same things that fill my soul, then I will have fulfilled the holy grail of spiritual enlightenment—the come around to my go around—and I can look back at my life in college to credit much of the hard work it took to get there.

Popularity: 8% [?]

Related posts:

1. Get in shape without lifting weights By Kathryn Przybyla Getting those six-pack abs out of hibernation...
2. One Year In By Jordan Brown Along with a few thousand other students,...
3. Flexible Volunteering — A way for busy students to improve their communities and build their résumés By Joshua Bach Associate Editor Classes, homework, labs, midterms, and...

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.