Tips to survive mandatory Pre-year arts and music!

[Emilia1320]

Hi. On my school every Pre-year student has to take one course of arts and one on music.

Arts is starting Monday.

And I hate arts. I have problem of attitude towards it but I just can't motivate myself. It always ends up same way: others draw nice pictures just like snapping their fingers, but I, even if I calculate scale carefully, always use ruler and harp, it just doesnt open for me.

Music is same problem, I can't read notes. I can sing to tone thou but I can't play anything.

[-._._.-]

I can think of a few things/mindsets you might want to try, although I'm not sure if they'll work for you.

 

1. The more self-conscious you are, the more likely you: won't let yourself 'be free' and/or will perceive that the others are better. This feeds your self-consciousness and it's sort of like a circle. 

 

2.  Try to enjoy them. Look forward to classes and everything.

 

3. Try not to hold back. Holding back kinda feeds your self consciousness. Make yourself feel comfortable in the classes so you'll be less likely to hold back. Tell yourself that you can do it and that your art and music is good. 

 

4. Erm tell yourself you can't be the worse? 

 

5. Or you could think of it this way: no matter what, you have to do it. Might as well make the most out of it and enjoy it.

I'm not sure how effective these are though.

All the best!

[Sandwich]

With art, maybe you're trying too hard. Art isn't really about scales and precision (or well it can be, but that's a lot of effort and unless you get it spot on, it looks rubbish). You can just freehand stuff and sometimes get an even better looking outcome. 'Sketchy'

 

Anyway, my point would be that it doesn't really matter how you do in these subjects. Anything pre-IB is neither here nor there. So unless I'm wrong and these things are significant to you, maybe take them a little less seriously. I can't read music either and my singing is also fairly atrocious, I just mucked around and laughed with my friends in our music lessons. Did I make great music? 100% not. But I didn't entirely hate those lessons 'cause I wasn't really disappointing myself - I knew I was bad and didn't care! Putting effort in and being terrible ironically got me higher grades from my teacher for "trying". So patronising but whatever

 

Basically, I would chill out. Don't expect anything more from yourself than what you can produce, and if you know you're rubbish then stop judging yourself by what you produce and just have a laugh about it instead. Lightening up may actually help you get a bit better because you're a bit more free with things! There's no 'right' or 'wrong' in art, it's just an exercise in making stuff up.