Fed Up with School

Let me start off by clarifying: I am not fed up with schooling, rather fed up with the institute itself.

When I first decided to go into animation, I knew I wanted to focus on the writing/story development side rather than the drawing/art side. I've always considered myself more of a storyteller than an artist, so although I would be majoring in animation, I would make sure I took as many creative writing classes as possible, including scriptwriting. If I want to write scripts for animation, then of course I'd need to know how. Unfortunately, my program of study doesn't include any scriptwriting courses, but that's OK; that's why I have electives. Quarter after quarter I asked if there were any scriptwriting classes available to take, and the answer was always no. Well, my prayers were finally answered, because next quarter I will be taking Introduction to Scriptwriting.

Today I went in to speak with my academic director about switching one of my other classes next quarter, and he informed me that he didn't think I would be able to take Intro to Scriptwriting because the rules say that only one of the four electives I have are allowed to be lower division; the rest have to be upper division. He spoke to the dean to make sure, and sure enough, since I already had a lower division elective, I would be unable to take Intro to Scriptwriting.

I felt like my dreams had been crushed. The ONE class I had wanted to take since I started school was unavailable to me. This rule about the one lower division elective/three upper division electives wasn't even around when I started school, so I felt like blindsided.

The lower division elective I already took was Intro to Photography, way back from my first quarter, when I was registered as a Graphic Design major. My school was one quarter away from offering Media Arts & Animation, so I decided to start off as a GD major since it had same first quarter fundamental courses as my current major - save for Intro to Photography. That was OK, though, because I had four electives to take and I didn't mind making one of them Photography.

Well, not with this new rule. If I wanted to take Intro to Scriptwriting, I would have to make Intro to Photography not count towards graduation. And that's exactly what I did. I will have to take one extra class just so I could take the class I actually wanted. In the grand scheme of things, one extra class isn't a big deal. The big deal is that my school changes policies without notifying students; policies that are often unfair to students. And when these new policies are found out, do they offer any explanation? No, they don't.

Like I said, I'm fed up with the school. If I care about my education, I'm going to have to take it into my own hands and stop assuming my school actually cares.