I know I’m speaking for everyone and everything when I say new year’s resolutions are hard. They’re hard to come up with because identifying your shortcomings as a human being sucks, and they’re even harder to keep.
New year’s resolutions are so hard to keep, in fact, that they’ve become a joke. Not giving a shit makes you cool, but in the words of Lindsey Weir on Freaks and Geeks, “I know you don’t care about anything, but just because your lives are such lost causes, don’t keep assuming that mine is.”
That’s episode 11, “Looks and Books.”
I got Netflix for Christmas.
A new year’s resolution is a good opportunity to apply stuff you’ve learned to yourself or your work in the long term, like a grown-up. For some art students, that thing is a specific attitude.
Perseverance and the ability to learn from our mistakes is a pretty important factor of life, and for artists and purveyors of art alike, it’s something quickly learned and accepted early on. There are none more self-deprecating, or at the very least, quick to figure out what needs improvement, than the culturally adept.
The beginning of a new year is a chance to sit yourself down, grab yourself by the shoulders, shake yourself and say, “Hey, why are there two of me?” Just kidding.
You’ve just lived a whole year of your life in which you probably accomplished a lot, in which case you can look back and learn from what you accomplished, and if you didn’t, you learn from that, too.
Maria Todorov-Topouzov, a third-year film production major here at York, says her new year’s resolution is to evaluate her artistic success on the redemption of her failures.
“Rather than base my success on people’s reactions to it, the way it looks, etc., I will base it on the fact that I was able to improve on so many things.”
In this sense, she says she aspires to view the end of a film project as a “point of departure” for the next one. “You are the judge of your own expectations. Forget the failures. Success is based on the correction of failures, and you are the judge of that.”
Matthew Murray, another third-year film production major at York also has a new year’s resolution: he’ll maintain a positive outlook.
“It sounds silly, but I really believe that if you think positively, good things will happen,” he says. “When you aren’t scared of the word ‘no’ anything becomes possible, and in 2014 I plan to continue to practice and develop my art freely, through this mantra— that anything is possible.”
Other art students have more specific resolutions. Olivia Loccisano, a third-year screenwriting major at York wants to “stop writing about old men and children.” She also wants to watch more commercially successful movies in theatres, which she feels will improve her writing.
Peter Sanfillippo, a media studies major at the University of Guelph-Humber in Toronto says he resolves to “to improve on writing and recording in small steps. Getting recordings down that sound like the actual instruments is trickier than it seems, so I’m making it a goal to improve that. I’d also like to improve my rhythm when playing guitar.”
As artists, we’re always working with others. Michael-Vincent Laviolatte, a student of graphic design at Montreal’s Dawson College, says his resolution is to “better educate [himself] on the roles of others.”
“Collaboration is an essential part of our field,” he says. “Understanding the language our neighbours speak leads to a better result.”
We’ve covered everything an artist has to worry about except for one big thing: the BFA-minus-F theory.
The BFA-minus-F theory involves taking what you love, and studying the shit out of it at school until it becomes the most tedious thing, and you feel nothing for it anymore.
Either you figure your shit out, or your life becomes void of passion, you drop out of your program and take up a job at a retail store where your boss yells at you for keeping your cup of coffee on the sales floor, and then he starts cutting back your hours and you just can’t take it anymore, so you dip in to your parents’ credit line and go back to the same school, just as a BA instead of a BFA, as an English major or something. Your art becomes a whimsical thing of the past that you’ll occasionally long for, but barely touch ever again because you “don’t really do that anymore.”
You’ll get old, and then you’ll die. But it doesn’t have to be that way…if you find a better way to manage your time.
Third-year screenwriting major Nikki Foy at York says her new year’s resolution is to make time for writing, which is unrelated to school—what she calls “actual work.”
School is a great motivational environment for some, but sometimes, it can be creatively stifling.
By keeping your personal projects at the top of your priority list, art school could seem like less of a drag and more of a…tool-shed? Full of tools. For you to use.
Likewise, Naomie Hadida, an illustration major at OCADU in Toronto, says she also resolves to “focus on personal work a lot more and not get lazy after spending creative energy on school work.”
And there you have it: all the bases. Artists’ new year’s resolutions are all about attitude adjustment, honing skills, working better with others, and time management.
Maybe after reading these, you won’t feel so alone in your insecurities. Or maybe you don’t have any. Either way, welcome to 2014, good luck with all your artistic endeavors, and happy schooling.
Oh, and get Netflix.
Erica Orofino
Staff Writer
