The ending of this class is mildly frightening.
That might seem at first to be a misleading statement. To clarify, the material of this class isn’t frightening; I’ve had an overall interesting and enjoyable experience. But this class ending means that I’m one step closer to my impending graduation from St. Olaf in a little over four months. The end of my time at St. Olaf means that I’m going into life for the first time without being dictated by any form of an educational system, which feels like an ambiguous black hole of stress. Fun times?
Between Zoom calls and homework for this class, I’m attempting to piece together scraps of knowledge to try to put together a coherent path for my future outside of St. Olaf. In that sense, I can’t easily separate my personal attempts to have some figured out for after graduation that isn’t working at Target with my academic musings on democracy and government and art.
One of the aspects I appreciate in retrospect about the class was that many of the people that we met had many varying interests and oftentimes took winding paths to get where they were today. In the class, we coined it as “zig-zagging” through their lives and careers. Many of the people who we spoke to did this, from Prof. Robert Idishi who got into working in the arts and disability through clinical practice, to Rina Rossi from the Minnesota States Art Board, who has a background in environmental studies just as I do.
This phrase and what it represented stuck with me because I am the ultimate zig-zagger. I’ve “zig-zagged” my way through a wide variety of jobs and experiences during my time at St. Olaf, oftentimes with a focus on bettering the St. Olaf community. Sometimes, it feels like my lack of focus on a specific area of experience was a hindrance, especially as I look for future jobs in the arts. Hearing that many other people had unusual vocational paths towards arts administration and policy made me feel more secure about my vast array of experiences because even my experiences that aren’t directly related to the arts can contribute to making people’s lives better in the arts, which is what I generally want to do post-graduation.
As I worked through concepts of democracy in this class, it allowed me to evaluate what my civic identity consisted of. The term “civic” for me correlates strongly with “government”, and one aspect that I was concerned about with this class was that I wasn’t sure if the class would have a sense of blind nationalism to it. I generally have a negative attitude towards the United States, and I was afraid with the focus of democracy on the American version of it would lead to an unsettling pro-American undertone to the entire class, that “civic” would mean dedication to what America represents. My values of public service and contributing to community building and the way I practiced these values within the St. Olaf community never really felt “civic” to me. It just felt like the right thing to do, rather than being an active conscious contributor to democracy.
After we started our meetings with arts advocacy professionals, I realized that the majority of people who we spoke to didn’t work in their positions not because they felt dedication to the lofty concept of the American democracy, but because they were dedicated to specific causes and communities. All of the people we were introduced to wanted to make their institution or their community a better place to be in, even if they were mainly focused on their niche area of interest. Examples for me included Dr. Samir Meghelli, who wanted to focus on community work through his experience as a historian, and Dr. Krystal Klingenberg’s emphasis on curatorial work, especially in ethnomusicology, in creating exhibits in the Smithsonian. I realized that their civic identities were less focused on ideas of nationalism, but more so on how they can better their communities by doing what they enjoyed and what they were good at. Everyone that we met brought a different skill set to the table, and the people we met worked on all the levels of government: from volunteering on Northfield government committees, to organizing funding on the state level in Minnesota, to helping incorporate arts policy on the Senate floor. All of our guests, regardless of the varied ways they worked in a governmental capacity, all had love and respect for the role they placed and the people they impacted. More so, everyone’s work enables others in a good way, and in that sense, maybe what it means to be civic at the core is to help uplift others, so that those you uplift and inspire can continue to uplift and inspire others in a… chain of positivity? Ignore the cheesiness.
The experiences of this class made me realize that my animosity towards many of the actions and beliefs of the politicians that run our country isn’t contradictory to my desire of aiding people through the arts. This realization made me reflect on my current process of exploring opportunities after my graduation. Potentially keeping a narrow focus on how I contribute or focusing on a smaller community would be a good fit for me as I continue working to better the world around me through arts advocacy and community building. This type of focus is just as beneficial as a larger, federal approach, but allows more freedom in shaping how my actions impact others.
With this concept in mind, I keep thinking about what my values mean to democracy. The term “democracy” still feels vast and abstract to me, even as I leave this class. But I think in this sense, what I’ve learned from our guests and my classmates is that democracy in the arts to me is just connecting with others through art while trying to make one’s respective community a better place. So far, I’ve been doing these things separately. My art practice feels more for myself, while my community advocacy is for others. While these two parts of my life can remain disconnected, seeing the work of the dozens of people who took the time to come see us makes me realize just how fulfilling my life could be if I can combine these two areas of my life.
Going forward from this class and the end of my time at St. Olaf in four months, I want to focus on finding more opportunities to combine these two areas of my life into something more. It’ll help relieve the odd feeling of just… leaving St. Olaf after having it fill such a large and specific purpose in my life, as I feel that I haven’t given back as much to St. Olaf as it has given to me. While my worth isn’t measured by my impact, and my stress about post-grad life won’t go away anytime soon, I know that contributing to making my community a better place to live through the arts will not only make my life better but make the lives of others better as well.