“My Year of Art School” is an amazing full-year course bundle taught by the wonderful Lilla Rogers (plus guest industry experts) on Make Art that Sells. Last year I ended up enrolling for the full thing which included some live and a few self-paced courses. It was actually a very impulsive decision at the time as I decided based on pure intuition and without putting a lot of thought into it. However, it was the most valuable career decision I’ve taken to date.
My first couple of months were pretty productive but after a while, I started falling behind on assignments. I generally have high expectations from myself so I was unhappy with the work I did for the courses. Also due to my day job, I missed some of the live classes and that only added to my frustration as the year was passing.
I’m not sure exactly when, but at some point during the second half of 2019, I decided to ditch the yearly schedule and make it work for myself. I went back to all the courses I missed and absorbed all the content. I also downloaded everything and organized them in neat and beautiful documents so I can refer back to them when needed.
Ignoring the assignment is definitely not an optimal way to go through the courses. However, once I let go of the stress of creating something worthwhile, I had the opportunity to learn and educate myself. The thing is, once I did that, I started feeling more confident about my work as well. Before the end of the year, I started working on a few assignments from various courses and experimenting with new media.
I know there are many of you out there purchasing online courses and then putting them aside for various reasons. Most likely your reasons are different than mine but the solution is the same, make it work for you!
The instructors always have the best intentions to create a perfect learning plan but we are all different. Take whatever makes sense for you and keep the rest for later. There’s no need to feel overwhelmed or discouraged. If your plan doesn’t work, change it again. Once you find your rhythm, everything will get much easier.
During that year, I learned so many things from the courses. However, the biggest revelation was learning things about myself. Allowing myself to do as much as I can instead of as much as I want was crucial. We all want to be super productive but it’s not always possible. There’s no need to stress about what you can’t do, or you don’t have time to do. Just do what you can, it was the most valuable lesson I learned through my first “Year of Art School”.
P.S. I actually signed up for “My Year of Art School 2020” as well! This year is going extremely well already and I’m planning to share more from that soon.
