College Versus Self-Education
The Brass Tacks of Education for Creators and What to Know For Your Own Consideration.
Anyone whose been in the game long enough will hear this question from new people over and over again. Should I go to college for writing and filmmaking, or should I just go out and do it? I honestly hate this question, not because it’s always asked. I hate it because most answers usually end up being one or the other.
You’re either told to go to college or you’re told to treat it like the plague. But in reality, both paths to success have their pros and cons, and I think we’re doing a huge disservice to new creators when we try to convince them to do one or the other. That’s too black and white, which deprives them of the ability to choose what’s best for them given their individual circumstances.
All of us are different and come from different lives. For some, a college education can be great, but for others, it may not even be possible. So to clear the air, I’d like to tackle the positives and negatives of each so that, for once, new creators can actually form a sound decision for themselves.
College
The good old traditional path to success. But…Is it, really? Well, that depends on what you do with your education. Unfortunately, the degree you pursue will determine how hard it will be to find success after graduation. For instance, if you get a degree in programming or engineering, the chances of finding a good-paying job are pretty high, assuming you do well in school, get an internship, and apply to places everywhere. But if you get a degree in writing or filmmaking…The education might be great, but the hustle will still be required post-graduation since internships and jobs will not be lining up at your door.
So whether you go out on your own or go to a nice school, no matter what, if you’re pursuing something like writing or filmmaking you will be put into the wild and will be forced to fend on your own until you figure it out. Most programmers and engineers will get placed into well-established civilizations. But writers and filmmakers? They gotta find civilization or build one for themselves.
That is no tall order, which is precisely why a good education can be valuable. Not only can it teach you the basics of the trade faster, but it can also give you a foundational network to build off of. So at least with an education, when you inevitably end up in the wild, you’ll be able to much more effectively survive and learn how to thrive in the harsh realities of the industry.
However, college is insanely pricey. It’s pretty much highway robber at this point. Be prepared to pay twice the amount for books, room and board, as well as meals (though the food is awesome!). And then there are all those general education requirements you have to take like Algebra I or Biology. Hey, it’s great to have a well-rounded education, but when each class costs thousands of dollars, you begin to wonder, “Do I really need to take these classes?”. In the end, I would be prepared to fork out anywhere between 30-40k if you want to go to a good school.
But you’re going for film and writing, so you don’t want to just go to a good school. You want to go to one of the best schools because unlike programming or engineering, writing and filmmaking are significantly more competitive. There are simply fewer jobs and opportunities that pay. So to stay competitive, you would ideally want to go somewhere like UCLA, AFI, New York, Stanford, Columbia, etc. Those are very hard to get into, and they are absolutely some of the most expensive schools in the World that cost much more than the average ones.
So when it all boils down to it, getting a formal education is fantastic, whether it’s in fine arts or hard sciences because ultimately, it can put more tools under your belt to use when you go off and make something of yourself. But it also comes at a tremendous cost.
Furthermore, a degree in filmmaking or writing, alone, will guarantee you absolutely nothing, which means whether you get a degree or not, it’ll literally all hinge on how creatively you construct yourself through hustling, networking, and building value by leveraging the value you create. But with a solid education from a great school, you can build those skills faster, more effectively, and gain a solid foundational network. That will greatly help you to build the value you need to leverage and advance.
No College
Well, what if you can’t afford college, you can’t get any grants, and you have to take out loans? Or what if you’re just convinced from all those news articles that college is a dead institution and you don’t even want to bother? No problem! Just kidding. There are a lot of problems that come with self-education, but if you’re able to solve them, then the benefits can be as good as getting an education, and in a lot of cases, astronomically better.
Self-education is like getting dropped off in the middle of nowhere having no idea how to get to safety, let alone how to survive in the wild. You’re scared, lost, alone, and you constantly don’t know what to do. That sounds like hell and it is, but learning how to overcome those challenges without any prior knowledge can help you develop a much deeper and more unique understanding of the craft.
College is great because it can quickly teach you the basics. But learning by doing it on your own can provide you great insights on the other important things like leveraging value to gain something, managing a lot of moving parts in a short amount of time under high-pressure situations where the stakes are high, figuring out how to secure money and resources you didn’t think you could acquire, selling yourself and your ideas to others, and many other things we rarely think about, let alone do in school.
On top of that, self-education can help you become much more unique in your craft because you have to teach yourself by solving problems in ways that work for you rather than ways that you were told would work. It isn’t that a college education prevents you from stepping out of the box. But it does make it less likely for you to explore alternatives to the conventions, and that can pay off greatly if you do it well.
However, all of this is predicated on whether you can even survive before burning out from failure. You don’t get a curriculum or a network to provide guidance. You have to be comfortable building all of that on your own. And that requires discipline and lateral thinking because you have to be creative both on-page, on-screen, and on strategy for moving forward. It is no easy task especially when you have to work a day job while you learn and practice. Yes, that’s right. You can’t just sit around and read books all day. Most of the time you have to practice by creating, and in doing so you have to be prepared for utter failure that can prove costly in time and money. But that’s how you learn with or without an education.
You must create, mess up, reflect, learn, and do better. Over and over and over again.
Conclusion
So go to college or don’t! This is a decision that has many factors you must consider to determine if it’s right for you. Do you have the money or means to pay for it without getting crushed with debt? Are you able to get into a great school? If the answer is, “Yes.” to both of these, you’d be crazy not to go to college! But maybe you can’t afford it or the school you can get into doesn’t have a really great film and writing program.
That’s totally fine because there are tons of resources out there to learn for free as well as writing and filmmaking groups you can join that are full of people who are just like you. They have no idea what they’re doing, but they all want to make films and realize cool things. So if you can’t go to college, start there. Find those people, create things with them, and if you can’t find them, make your own group and invite them to you. But whatever you decide to do, make it count and always aim high…Just not too high. Take it from a guy who went down that path. You will go bankrupt!
Anywho, hope this helps you make the right decision for yourself, and as always, best of luck in your writing endeavors!
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Story Prism, LLC