When You're Not School Smart But Art Smart

You've heard the term "street smart" but what about art smart? Because that's what some of us are

It was in my last year of high school that I knew school wasn’t for me, not because I was dumb but simply because that system wasn’t made for me. The idea of going to college, sitting for 8 hours or more, not being able to travel whenever I wanted, studying for 4 or 5 years (when I can learn faster) and all that in a city that I despise, seemed like torture. Luckily for me, my skills and talents had already given me great opportunities at the ripe age of 16 and 17, like shooting for the rapper G-Eazy and working on paid photoshoots, so after some time while I was still in high school + a sort of life plan breakdown I convinced my parents to allow me to skip university.

Today, let me tell you what I’ve learned along the way since then and why like me you might be art smart and not fully or not even at all school smart.

Are You Art Smart? Here’s What Makes Me An Art Smart Individual

I’m a Natural Self-Taught Person

I was surprised to learn that not everyone can learn from YouTube videos and a lot of practice, most people need live classes and continuous feedback from a teacher to learn a skill or topic, but not me.

The first time I learned something through mere observation was when I was around 7 and this was loom weaving, I was at a local crafts market when me and my grandparents walked around and I saw a lady who sold yarn and was twisting a strand of yarn on a funny-looking rectangle with nails along each side, I asked my grandparents to stop at her stand and she told me she was knitting and showed me how it was done, I only watched for about 10 minutes and that was enough for me to understand and learn how to do it, there and then my grandparents bought me the weaving loom along with a yarn and I started knitting scarves to sell at school.

Throughout my life so far I’ve learned photography, videography, video editing, embroidering, crochet, different kinds of knitting, jewelry making and other crafty skills and all of them thanks to the internet. Being self taught has led me to create pretty cool stuff and I know for a fact that I’ve learned the same if not more over shorter periods than my friend’s semesters at university.

Being self taught and gaining experience on my own has given me opportunities in less time than what it would’ve taken me if I enrolled to uni and had to wait all those years and has allowed me to immerse in artistic knowledge and grow from there.

I Need an Active Learning Method, Otherwise I Get Bored and Distracted

In addition to my innate skills and some YouTube lessons, what I did studied in high school was photography, and it was my favorite class 1. because I was interested in the topic and 2. because my teacher always made sure we had 1 hour of theory and another of practice. This was ideal for me as I don’t absorb as much knowledge sitting for over an hour just listening and watching slideshows about the topic.

But as much as I like the active learning method it isn’t always available even as a self-taught girl since for example the online courses I’ve been taking don’t often include hands-on assignments, they only feature video lessons and quizzes, yet somehow I’ve learned a lot through them. Perhaps it’s that I don’t feel pressured or obliged by school but instead I like learning and paying attention to those because it’s a topic I’m interested in and actually choosing to learn and I take notes on my notebook to learn and and put into practice for my business and entrepreneurship projects. Additionally, I tend to get more interested towards art-related themes so I get more eager to learn about that compared to other topics.

The issue with universities is that traditional learning at school is what is mostly available and not my fave method. But now that I’m writing and thinking about it, it also depends on the degree and a cinematography degree must be all hands on deck, maybe I should give a try to in-person certificate courses related to what I enjoy and work on?

I’m a Jack Of All Trades

A blessing and a curse, being a Jack of all trades means I don’t fit in a box and have a wide variety of abilities and talents which as an artists comes in very handy because you can integrate knowledge from other areas into a creative project. For example, my graphic design enthusiasm paired with my photography and marketing knowledge makes a great combo to create the posts for my travel startup.

HOWEVER, the curse about being a Jack of all trades is that if you don’t have self-discipline and you mix that with some ADHD it’s the ideal recipe for chaos and slow or zero progress. I’ll talk about this later on.

I Need To Be Constantly Creating

In my high school years I constantly felt the need to be shooting whether planned portrait shoots with friends or simply taking my camera with me everywhere and shooting interesting things around me, and around those same years I loved painting on canvases, art journals and sketchbooks. Later when for some reason (that I’d like to pin down) I lost my enthusiasm for photos and developed a passion for crochet, –which to this day still persists– and I don’t know if it’s a symptom of undiagnosed ADHD or just my artistic and creative nature since I was a child but I looove to always be working on something artsy.

I Sucked at Most Regular Classes

Throughout my high school years I almost failed physics, calculus and math a couple times, in some cases it was because the teacher was bad at their job and other times because I struggled with the subjects. But the classes where I thrived were literature, philosophy, art history, art, and photography which is cool because since I graduated I’ve worked as a freelancer in photo + video and copy and content writing. Like I mentioned previously, I learned and developed these skills and others thanks to the internet, also through reading a lot because that has allowed me to expand my vocabulary and stay up to date on topics I write about.

What I mean is that while I found the standard class curriculum hard to deal with I found a couple classes that were actually interesting to me and from there I was able to discover what I was good at and started taking my interest on them to work.

Lessons I’ve Gained So Far

1. Discipline and Organization Have To Rule Your World

As much as I’d love to say that I’ve been perfectly organized and disciplined in the past years i’ll be honest with you –because this newsletter isn’t called The Real Deal for no reason– when I say that I’ve SUCKED at that and it has set me back a lot. Once again, referencing back to the undiagnosed ADHD I probably (I’m almost sure) I developed, wanting to work on multiple projects and abandoning some after a little while along with a nonexistent organization system has been harmful to me because I’ve felt that my progress has been dragged by a shackle. Oftentimes I get pissed at myself and get insomnia at night because I get anxious and stressed about the fact that I’m not doing enough as I know damn well I could.

To get out of this rut myself and to anyone seeking a career out of school or traditional corporate jobs this avoid this awful feeling I’d strongly advise us to find or develop a system that works almost or totally perfectly for our brains and find a way to stick to it. If you already have excellent self control and discipline then you’re already on a good path, but if you don’t and like me are a bit chaotic you have to find a way to get things done. The book Atomic Habits offers some good tips for this such as signing a contract with a friend or family member that makes you abide to the goals or habits you want to stick to or else you have to pay a fee.

2. You Need To Be Always Learning

Just as it’d be wise to do so if you graduated from university, continuous learning is essential to stay up to date to the fast-paced world we live in regardless of your field, especially now more than ever where AI is a huge component that can potentially replace any kind of job. And apart from AI, people looking to hire always favor those who are constantly learning and brooding their knowledge and have proof that they have what it takes to get something done.

And even though I said I’m a jack of all trades, I think it’s important to choose 1 or 2 things to develop to the max so you can have a stronger skillset, be able to master them as much as possible and have proof of that without being all over the place.

3. Having a Great Portfolio Is a Must

If you work or want to work on something related to art such as creative direction, photography, design, etc. you have to have a strong portfolio that showcases the kind of quality product you can deliver on your next gig, otherwise you will have a hard time finding clients if they can’t see that what you can do for them is actually amazing.

4. You Have to be Networking as Much as You Can

If you didn’t attend university or are not planning on it you have to find a way to make great connections. As we all know, school in general is a great way to network and gain useful contacts but if you don’t have that you need to find a way to make up for that and meet people somewhere else. I’m not in a position to give a lot of advise on this as I haven’t truly done it very well but you can find a lot of resources on the internet to become a pro in networking.

6. Using The Internet To Your Favor is Mandatory

Even though there are many things I dislike nowadays about the internet –the million Pinterest ads, the AI training of M*eta, etc– it is the best tool to reach those who we want to do business with and share our work, so finding a way to make the most out of social media is the medium to get our dream clients + contacts and showcase our skills.