Weisel: Take creative classes to enjoy college

It’s that time of year again: advising season. The time when you sort through hundreds of…It’s that time of year again: advising season. The time when you sort through hundreds of classes on a dim gray website trying to fill your schedule with the classes you need and the classes you want without stressing yourself out, having bad professors or taking a class on Fridays.

It’s overwhelming, to say the least.

School is stressful, no matter what major you’re studying or what your classes are; everyone needs to blow off some steam. So this is my advising for you: When choosing your classes this semester, slide in a creative class that will help you release anxiety from the rest of your semester.

A creative class can be one of multiple options. It could be a class in studio arts, theater, writing, music, or even physical education. These are all fields that rely on some form of creative expression.

Pitt offers courses in all of these subjects, including Basic Piano, History of Jazz, Fiction Writing, Costume Design, Basic Drawing and Dance Production. While not known for classes in the arts, Pitt offers a wide variety of artistic classes that seem to go unheard of by people who aren’t in those fields.

Now, I’m sure you’re saying to yourself at this point: I’m not an artist, why should I care?

Well, let me tell you something — you don’t need to be an artist. The whole point of art is that it comes from a real person and a real place that creates some kind of real expression. Especially in an introductory course, the class is not about your skill level, but instead about your willingness to learn, to work and to create.

Most academic courses don’t afford their students a creative outlet, especially in fields such as math, business and the sciences. Even history and literature courses can be constricting when you’re spending your time analyzing someone else’s work instead of creating your own.

Especially when piling up four or five classes concentrated on intense work completely focused on the left side of your brain, you need to leave a little room for the right side to come out and exercise. The best way to force yourself to embrace your creative side is to sign up for a class that’s going to engage it.

Even if you’re already in a creative field, I would still suggest trying something artistic outside of your usual comfort zone. Often when we’re extremely invested in our art, particularly when we’re forced to be through copious amounts of schoolwork, we lose the creative outlet that led us to study that subject to begin with. A creative field, when studied in school, can sometimes become as tedious as calculus or biology.

Taking a class outside of your usual field will allow your already creative mind to explore other areas of expression that you might not have considered before. It might even provide inspiration for your other coursework and allow you to revisit your field with a renewed creative energy.

Still not convinced? I can tell you from experience — it’s awesome.

Last fall, I overloaded my schedule with writing, literature and history courses. While these may seem like fields with a lot of creative output, because they’re within my fields of study, they easily became really stressful and overwhelming. So I decided to take Costume Design, a class in the theater department that I could take without being a theater major.

That class was my saving grace in the most stressful semester of my college career (until this one). Whenever I got anxious or overwhelmed, I knew that twice a week I could look forward to spending 75 minutes reading plays and learning to sketch, paint and design. I wasn’t very good at first, but just the act of focusing on some kind of artistic expression relieved my busy mind. Since then, I’ve taken a creative course outside of my major every semester.

For some of you, it may seem like a strange concept to take an artistic course that may have nothing to do with your intended field or count toward your major. And while it may not seem like a practical thing to do for academic success, it will help you expand your horizons and exchange anxious energy for creative energy.

So during the next month, as you meet with your advisors and start to schedule your classes, consider taking a course in the arts. You never know what kind of artistic genius you might unearth.

Contact Elizabeth at eaw62@pitt.edu.