[TOPIC] Art School

It really depends on the school. I attend one of the Art Institutes, and it's more like highschool than a regular university, mostly because we don't have a real campus. Student body tends to be close knit cause we're small, and naturally, there's art everywhere in the building. Classes depend on major - photography you'll probably be doing color theory, digital photo, traditional photo, lighting, composition, etc. General atmosphere and people - well, some of them are kinda out there. And we have a greater amount of adults attending our school since we're geared towards career development. A Place like SCAD would probably be rather different though.

Dunno if that helps any.

~Annie

Two of my friends went to school for photography, and it was very insular; almost everyone knew each other because they all had the same classes and were in the studio all the time. One thing you'll find is that photography students are on campus/in the darkroom a LOT. Unlike most specializations, a photography student can't exactly take the darkroom home when he or she has a project due.

A lot of them set up agreements over darkrooms -- which one "belonged" to whom, and often times groups would pull all-nighters and/or sleep there. It's a weird kind of bonding when you're in a room full of people who are dead tired and too exhausted to even say hi to each other, but all have a similar deadline to meet. There's a lot of trust there, too, people leaving their stuff in the lab and whatnot because they know everyone and trust them not to take it.

I was at art school, oh my god, twenty years ago now! I was painting rather than photography, but I guess it applies. One thing that's important I think is that the day is sort of unstructured compared to say a student who is attending lots of lectures and seminars. There is some formal teaching of course, but a lot of the time you're getting on with your own work and have to have the motivation and discipline to keep doing that without too much supervision.

I did the art school thing in a place where the fine arts school was a branch of a much larger university setting. As mentioned before, the art school people (and classes) are much less structured than their typical school-going counterparts.

One major question I have though is whether they are studying color or black and white. Yes, you can do both, but processing color prints requires absolute darkness while B&W prints can have a certain amount of low frequency (reddish) light (its about the photo paper's sensitivity, not the film at that point). Your character could have interesting encounters in the dark room depending on the light you may have available.

Also, while your character may be specializing in photography, they will probably take classes in other disciplines as well, like ceramics, painting, glass blowing, sculpture...etc.

Hope that helps.
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I'm attending a college of art and design. There is a sort of divide at my college between the fine arts and design (photography being in design, myself being in the fine arts - I don't have any specialized knowledge of photography, but I'll let you know what I know).

My schedule includes introductory studio classes in the various disciplines (ie. painting, drawing, ceramics, fibre, print media, glass, sculpture, etc.) and open studio classes in my major (drawing). We are also required to take liberal studies courses (ie. history, humanities, social sciences, and english). Photography students, I assume, have similar studio courses (but more focused on design than fine arts) and liberal studies. You can probably visit any art institute's website and they will have course descriptions online.

Since this is the only school I've been to, I don't know how normal it is. It is much smaller than a university. My studio classes are usually under 20 students, open studio about 10 students, liberal studies 20-30. The largest classes are a couple of the art history classes because they are general and required, usually upwards of 60 students. You get to know people, especially the ones in the same year, and more specifically the same department. Honestly, my peers are some of the most intelligent, profound, critical thinkers I have ever met. Most of us are pretty normal, some of us are quite outlandish. Instructors can be more like colleagues. It is less structured. You're expected to be in the studio working whenever class is scheduled, but you can be in and out, leave early, work after hours, etc. Liberal studies have papers, mid-terms, and final exams. Studio courses have critiques.

Oh, and it is a lot more work that most people think it is. It is not an easy degree.

I majored in art and journalism in high school, but in college I didn't do more than take a couple of classes in art.

I have my own question, though. I lost interest in art in college because my teachers thought that there was no life for artists other than striving to be "fine artists." Do they still look down and discourage commercial or technical art? (You know, the kind that could actually bring in money? ;-) ) Frankly I'd love to get back into it, but I don't want to be an "artiste." Or was it just the snobbery of those couple of art teachers that I had?

Truth to tell, though, I had the same problem with writing teachers. They were disgusted by the idea that I wanted to write fantasies or mysteries. If I had to write fiction, rather than personal essays, then it had to be "literary" fiction--the kind where everyone's suffering from some sort of angst and nothing ever really happens.

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Thanks for all the info. I've found some schools that offer photography and arts in general but they are big schools and I'd like to send my character to a small school, preferably near New York. Does anyone know any? I haven't really found too much doing research.

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Oh, the ideas you've put into my head! To be honest, I hadnt even considered traditional photography for my MC, but this just make digital seem so much less interesting...

If you're looking for something in New York, you'll want to be looking at schools like Pratt, Parsons, SVA, and Cooper Union.

I went to Pratt, which has a photography department, though it was my understanding Pratt isn't one of the better schools for photography majors (the facilities were pretty sad when I was there). Every art student was required to take an introductory course in which we learned how to use a manual camera, and how to develop black and white film, so a photo major will definitely be spending lots of time in the darkroom, especially freshman or sophomore year!

Art school (especially in New York) is as much about making connections as it is honing your craft. You'll be spending time with professors who are known in the field, and making friends whose work interests you, and maybe doing some internships.

Pratt has a gated campus, but I think the others don't - "the city is their campus". Socially, I felt like there were some tightly-knit groups, but people were out in the city doing their own thing, so the student body felt pretty scattered to me. Within your own major, you do get to know people, since you see them in all your important classes.

Zookeeper, it totally depends on what school you choose, and even then, what major you're in. I was in Communications Design, where ideas were as important as execution and being commercially viable was kinda the whole point. The only time I encountered any fine arts snobbery was when I took some summer courses in painting and printmaking. Even then, it was just a few offhanded comments which were more amusing than offensive.

Mine was a larger art school, but I did minor in photography. :)
We had plenty of studio classes, but the labs of film developing. It can be a bit pricey, as most of the schools don't supply their own cameras and what not.
Sometimes there can be a small course on beauty, such as how to do hair styling and make-up to work with certain lightings.
I'd imagine it would be a rather close-knit atmosphere. Mine was a large crowd, but many of us still knew one another. Plus there were many alternative types (myself being one). Not all of them, of course!
Hope that helps at all.

My mother went to art school and majored in photography. She went to Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, Cali and we recently went back to visit.

I don't know much about how the classes would be conducted, but I do remember one of my mom's old professors saying that darkroom photography was going downhill. More students were interested in the easier route of digital. Depending on whether your MC wants to use digital cameras or darkroom, the study course could change. Darkroom photography requires more in-depth study of color, contrast, light, and exposures. My mom often complains that her workers fresh out of art school have no concept of these because they worked in a primarily digital media, preferring the modernization and relatively easier route. I can ask my mom for more details, but only if your character is working in darkrooms.

'Madness is like gravity... All it needs is a little push.'

'You have truly fallen when having everything means nothing and having nothing means everything.'

I currently go to the Maryland Institute College of Art and while I was a General Fine Arts major, I'm animation now, I took a photography class here.Photography, like most other arts, can get pretty expensive when it comes to buying a camera, film, lots of paper to print on, chemicals for developing film, etc. I only have experience with printing traditional black and white photography so I can't say very much about color processing. You definitely spend a lot of time in the dark room and there's a lot of trial and error when making test prints to figure out the exact right amount of time to expose the paper to the light to get the best print possible.
As far as art school in general goes it is a lot more tight knit than regular universities. Classes tend to be smaller, generally not above 20. You know, or at least recognize, the majority of the people in your grade and likely know everyone in your major by name. Painting and Illustration are the two largest majors at my school with Environmental Design being the smallest. Animation is one of the smaller majors as well. You'll probably have friends in a variety of majors but a lot of the time you end up getting along with a lot of students in the same few majors. Animators and illustrators tend to have a lot of similar interests it seems. The fine art majors, painting, gfa, and sculpture normally see a lot of each other. Fibers and photography can both either be more on the fine art or commercial side so they probably see a mix of people.
We still have liberal arts classes, but not nearly as many as students in other colleges. We don't have many papers or tests in general, but overall making artwork very frequently takes more time to do when it comes to homework. Students in art school also tend to be very liberal, we have a high population of vegans and vegetarians, and there are often times many more female students than male students. At my school there are twice as many women as there are men. You still have hipsters around but a lot of people just do their own thing as well. Not many of us enjoy math or athletics, though of course there are some that do. Oh, and I'd say at least half the people who attend my school smoke. I didn't associate art kids with smoking until I started going to art school.

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I spent four years at the Savannah College of Art and Design, and some things were more like a traditional university but most were a little or a lot different.

We didn't have a closed campus, there was a bus system for students and all the buildings had ID controlled access, but you could go across the street or around the corner from most buildings and hit a restaurant/coffee shop and most of the major's had 'their proprietary hangouts based on proximity.

There was no greek system so rush, pledging, formals, and other fraternity/sorority events were right out. Most people's social network was a combination of people in your major and people with whom you had common interests/activitys (example, I had some friends in my major, but I also had a large circle of friends from clubs and sports, as well as the six degrees of separation effect, or, I know a guy who knows a guy)

Every major was stereotyped by the other majors, architects never sleep, fashion designers are ditzes, the panting department is full of hippys, comic arts are all huge nerds, computer animation is all vampires (never see the sun)

After the first year and a half, which is usually foundation work, (photo majors had to take drawing 1 and 2 when I was there, which they complained viciously about) you stooped really having classes with people outside your major, except in a few general studies classes, lit, math, art history. Most classes were between 15 and 20 people altho some studios were smaller, so you generally were on a first name basis with everyone in your year even if you weren't best friends with all of them.

As for general life, I'd bet we went voluntarily to more art openings than most college kids, we also went to gallery 'happenings' for interactive or performance art. There's also an interesting social aspect where you're often bouncing ideas back and forth, as well as talking to people outside your major who may have experience relative to your current projects. Its also possible to get involved in alot of amateur works, acting in student films or theater, doing modeling for photography shoots or fashion shows. My friends and I also did things like have nerf wars in our apartments, 2am study break raids to the closest coffee shop, cookie o'clock where you had to make cookies, LAN Parties, midnight beach trips.

Hope that helps! good luck with your art school

I'm taking art classes now part-time. I'm in the art program at a regular university. You still have to take all the general ed classes, but there's a whole art curriculum, too. I never lived on campus, so I can't tell you about that, but my classes so far have been very small (less than 15), so we're pretty tight-knit. And after a couple of semesters you get to know most of the people in the program, and the teachers as well.

"This corn is like an angel."

I went to an art school in England, two actually and the experience that I had there was dramatically different from a regular 4 year college or university. First because you pick your major, and the first year you do a Foundation course, where you practice various disciplines in art. Then the subsequent 3 years are all involved in you focused and studying only your major. No side classes, no electives, nothing but your major over and over to get the most exposure, knowledge and practice possible.

The art schools are usually smaller than regular schools, even the prestigious ones over there. The one I attended was sortof partnered with a "regular" university, in that we were allowed to use their sports facilities and larger library in addition to our own, though it was still a separate school.

Also because it was small, there weren't many dorms, so most people just rented houses or apartments together. The culture is so different because everyone is so incredibly artsy and creative, and you can just let go and know people won't think you're weird for stopping down a dark alleyway spending 10 minutes to set up a perfect camera shot, or walking around all day with blue sunglasses to get a better perspective to inspire one of your projects. There's always something quirky going on, and a lot of the majors actually work with each other, for example film and animation work closely together, animators with producers, editors, etc, who also work with modelmakers and sculptors to make sets, etcetc.

I was in animation myself so... any other questions let me know if I can help :)

I studied art at a university, but we always referred to what took place in the art building as the art school. Our classes were often much longer than other students' because we'd have a studio class for two or three hours. I don't know what the gen ed requirements are at an exclusively-art school, but we had some core competency and a smattering of classes in various categories (x credits in the humanities, x credits in mathematics, etc.) There were definitely a lot of kids who made themselves their work of art and dressed unusually, collected tattoos, did strange stuff with their hair. There was a half-joking understanding among the students that what we were doing was not going to get us anywhere in life. The art building was open all night and you could often find kids in the computer labs rendering animations or in the painting or sculpture studios at three in the morning. If anyone in your novel spends time in the darkroom, you've got to describe the smell. Half the third floor reeked of photochemicals. In some classes, there was a general attitude of kids trying to outdo each other and make the most outrageous piece. The teachers can be as weird as you like, and anyone who's been there would believe it.

Wait, I've been scripted into the Frenzy Army?

I study Digital Media at the Collage of Fine Arts which is part of the University of New South Wales. So, definitely not. Most of the people doing my course want to get into 3D animation or film (as far as I know), and we have a thing on campus called an iCinema, which is all about researching an interactive way of watching films and television. I've seen some third year works where they've handed in graphic novels, too.

For the original question, life on campus is a lot more close-knit than over at Kensington (the "real" UNSW campus) but that's also because our campus is so small by comparison. We have one cafe and a common room. The main campus has a dozen food outlets, a mcdonalds across the road, and a unibar. Our pool table is free, theirs aren't.

Also, the lecturers/tutors don't baby you the same way they do at university. I did a year of a combined arts course last year, and I get the impression that a lot of the tutors at UNSW are used to kids directly out of high school. At COFA, I'm older than a few of my tutors, but none of them are nearly as patronising.

I go to art school, specifically Columbia College Chicago. I've also attended normal university.

Art school is way different. "Liberal Arts & Science" classes are a joke. People are not as involved in campus activities. The focus is more on a portfolio than a degree. They tend to be way more liberal. In comparison to the university I went to, people read a lot less. Visual arts are bigger. And all the photog girls I've seen always wear leggings. There's a culture of "everyone is special"-- meaning that people are a lot more hesitant to criticize your work. After all, it's your vision, right? I'm sure this varies from school to school. A lot of people either have no idea of what they want to do with their degree or an overinflated idea of what they can do. (I'm going to be the next greatest Hollywood director/American Fashion Designer!) Internships and networking are very very important. Everyone has business cards. Lots of partying/drug use. Smoke breaks in class are very important. Going Green is taken seriously.

I studied computer animation at Syracuse University. So while I mainly took classes in the art building, most other students studied the usual subjects found at school. SU had about 10,000 undergrads and 33% of them joined the Greek system. (Stats may be different now). I joined a sorority, as did all my friends, art students or not. The art students tended to live in the same dorms because it was closer to the art building, considered the "jappy" dorm, which I probably fit into as well, to be honest.

Each semester, we were required to take 3 studio classes and 1 "art history." The studio classes were five hours long, only one day a week. This meant that the studio either took place from 8-1 or 1-5 or something like that. The "art history" didn't have to be traditional art history. Anything related to art or music counted, so like, my senior year I took History of Rap Music and it counted toward my art history elective. Since I was a computer animation major, most of my art histories dealt with television or film.

Freshman year all art students whether you were painting, film, or photography had to take the same core curriculum. This consisted of three studios: drawing, 2D composition, and 3D medium. Drawing should be self explanatory. It covered all forms from figure drawing (yes, naked people) to portraits to landscapes, etc etc. 2D composition dealt with all other forms of 2D art such as collaging, painting, photography all focusing on composition layouts. I remember my favorite project included taking 2-3 roles of film of a chosen inanimate object from all angles. We then arranged our developed photos into a single composition offering a cubist perspective of the chosen object. We then turned that into a different medium of our choice. I painted mine. 3D class used all sorts of sculture mediums from plaster carving, clay, wood working, stuff like that. I was terrible at the 3D class but awesome at the other two. Freshman year we were also required to take fundamental Art History and then a class called Art Issues which dealt more with topics in art through the years rather than a rundown of chronology.

At Syracuse, you were put into a group of students and you all had the same five classes together. It was called a section I think? There were about 18 of us in my section, and we all became kind of friends, though my very best friends were not in my art section even though they were art students.

One thing to make sure to include: art teachers critique HARD and force the other students to offer their truthful opinion, positive or negative. Also, if you're character takes a painting elective, s/he should probably be warned that we had to make our own canvases from scratch. I.e. cut the wood on the wood working machines, wrap the canvas, staple it on, and gesso over it. I used my charm to get cute guys to do the wood cutting for me since the machines scared me.

After freshman year, you chose a major. Since mine was computer graphics, I then had to take only one required class a semester and the rest I could choose my studio electives, art history electives, and any academic elective I may have wanted. Let me just say, I never took a test once in all of college after freshman year except for my Understanding Music classes, where the tests consisted of remembering piano keys and identifying music by ear, so not exactly something you could study for. There were tests in art history, but I have a photographic memory so I never really had to study for them either, plus it was a giant lecture class and extremely easy to, um, cheat. Oh yeah, I did have a test in my Wine and Beer class senior year, but I took that pass/fail so I could get drunk and not worry about studying.

As far as social life, my roommate freshman year wasn't in art, but my best friends were. Like I said, I joined a sorority and that took up a lot of my time. I did spend more and more time in the computer lab as I got older because my projects required more time. I'm sure a photography student will spend many hours in a dark room.
So social life is pretty normal as any university in my experience. I went out to bars 3 nights a week. By senior year I only had classes Tuesday, Wed, and Thurs.

Also, I don't know if this is useful, but I've noticed the hard working kids in my major got awesome jobs when they graduated and the ones who kind of slacked off are not doing anything related to art right now.

And I have to say, I think most of the art students at my school dressed and acted normally. Yeah, there were a handful that did not, but they usually kept to themselves.

~Shana~

The professors were required to achieve certain levels of notoriety in order to remain on staff. For example, every three years (I think) the computer graphics professors had to take a semester sabbatical so they could show their work internationally. So maybe that's where this attitude comes from?

I, personally, never experienced anything like you're describing. But I could have a selective memory. It's been five years since I graduated. Most of the professors encouraged us to keep doing the kind of art we love as a hobby after we graduate. Sadly, I have not picked up a paint brush since! But I do write, which I loved just as much.
~Shana~

~Shana~

If you have the time, The Cheese Monkeys by Chip Kidd sounds like a good novel for you to read. Chip Kidd pretty much takes everything he experienced in his first year of art school, twists it, and puts it on the page. It has a great cross section of how different types of art students behave under pressure and how their minds work.

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Like I said, at my art school, this is DEFINITELY not the case. Critiques always have to be formed in a positive light, if at all. It's a philosophy of highlighting the best allowing students to develop their own style. I took "art" classes at a normal school, and they were tough, but at a full art school, it's a little bit different.

Since this is now the Art School thread, I have a question as well. My MC has shown an interest in art, and art history specifically. I've looked up various schools that have art history degrees, but I was wondering if there was a Harvard or Yale of Art History. I understand that the career future for that major is pretty terrible, and that is a factor in the plot. At least it is as of now!

I'm not actually an art student myself, but I go to an art school. These are just a few things I've observed.

Most art students are easily distinguishable from other majors on campus just from their clothing style: girls wearing pants and dresses at the same time, dyed hair, and the occasinal goth-punk guy. They tend to be the butt of everyone's joke on campus. The art students I know all know that odds are against them for finding art-related jobs after school, but they all believe they can be in the 5% (I believe) of art majors that make it. From what I've seen, the students all support each other and critique each other's work before the professor does. Classes are pretty tough, especially your first year. Foundations at my school goes from 8 AM until noon. At the end of the semester, most forsake sleep for work. Art projects are everywhere on campus. If you ever see something and you're not entirely sure what it is, it can easily be dismissed as art. For instance, (and one of my favorite examples), a bunch of broken desks in a ball hanging from a tree.

"Into the woods and who can tell
What's waiting on the journey"

Oh man, this is right up my ally- I bet I'm gonna write a bunch of stuff down and then be like, Dammit! I forgot to mention this!! But anyway: Art college is totally different. Most of them tend to be really small, and my graduating class was less than one thousand.

Classes, unless it's liberal arts (which none of us ever took seriously) were usually studio courses, meaning that a lot of them were longer than your normal class- foundation year, studio classes were more than five hours long. It's not uncommon for students to pull all nighters for a simple homework assignment, as that it's never as simple as reading a lot and then writing a paper or doing a bunch of math problems.

I'm not sure what normal school is like, to be honest, but mine didn't have frats or sororities- most parties did NOT have a keg and were mostly hipster dance parties... And I suppose if your story is in present day, art schools are just steeped in hipster culture- it's what all the cool kids were haha.

Um, statistically, girls out numbered the guys 3 to 1, and then out of the guys, a good deal of them were gay. And then if you weren't gay, there was a good chance that the guy was really cocky- but then again, most of the guys were since it was like, everybody who were the artsy hot shots in their high schools now gathering in one place. In general though, in the beginning, it was an extremely competitive environment where you're always sizing up everybody and mentally placing people in categories (like, if you knew this one girl who couldn't draw figures to save a life, yet her attention to texture and detailing in her non figure work was amazing... well then you knew when to feel threatened, stuff like that) and a lot of bullshitting. Towards the end, since it was a small school, you really got to know everybody and you have everyone placed, and then everyone's a lot more sensitive to each other since we just all know each other that well.

What was funny is that in the foundation year of my school where no majors were declared yet, we used to analyze people and try to guess which major they chose (the kids who couldn't draw well were the photography kids).

Um, let's see, what else... Oh, so more about the general population- perhaps it was because of my school and it's so called prestige, the majority of students were upper middle class or just flat out rich. And white. A couple of the students were also able to attend because of their parent's affluence (I knew a girl who, annoyingly, was one of those big talkers who didn't do any work- a friend who worked in the registrars office later told me this girl's application had her father's resume, who's a big time director in LA, stapled to the front of it.) The other big majority that attended were, strangely enough (for me) were koreans. There is a huge korean population at art schools- a lot from actual South Korea. And they tended to be their own cliques, almost like a different section of the school at times.

Um, as for photography... as far as I knew, it was one of the more bullshit majors at my school. It was a really lax department in which, after you take the basic classes (the dark room ones, the photoshop digital ones) you really could just do anything as long as you could make up some reason for it.

Hmm. Because we were all divided by our majors, it became part of our identities, in which we'd refer to people as 'Nicole, that girl in print making,' or something of that sort. And the majors itselves had its own identities (and favored drug- though I'm pretty sure art school wasn't the only place where there was a lot of this)- the industrial design kids were the closest things we had to jocks- there's always a strong biking culture there, with everybody comparing their fixed gear bikes. The apparel majors were usually all girls with a couple of gay guys, and they were the drama queens and coke heads. Illustration kids were the nerdy, geeky ones. Film and animation people were generally just a little bit less nerdy than the illustrators, more drug usage than them as well. Painting and print making were generally the hipsters of the hipsters and they used the whole gamut of 'mind enhancers,' and photography majors were half as hipster-ish- though just as intense into coke since we were convinced that they just had that much time on their hands.

Um, yeah. If there's anything else specific you need to know, feel free to pm me.

I live in New York City, and I'm studying Graphic Design and Animation in a small computer arts program at a fairly small school. However, I did take 2 semesters of photography when I was an art major at LaGuardia HS, and I took some classes at FIT, which does have a photography major.

If you want a smaller school in NYC, I would recommend using FIT (Fashion Institute of Technology). It's a state school, so it's cheaper and...less overwhelming than schools like Pratt or SVA. It's right in the city, on 7th Ave and 27th St. There and in my HS the ratio of girls to guys was about 3:1, as someone else mentioned, although the program I'm in now (not at FIT) has only a handful of girls in the Manhattan campus. I have one class with a total of 3 girls, myself included. In all my other classes it is only me and one other girl, with about 10 or 12 guys.

The thing that will appear with an art major of any type is studio time. The life of an art major revolves around studio time. In this case, it will be darkroom time. For me, the biggest hassle was using the dark room with tons of people, and having them mix up the tongs in the chemical trays. If you mix the tongs, it screws up the prints. You end up with tong marks and different chemical stains running down the image, and you don't even know it until you're done. So dark room time would likely be an issue for any photography major, I would imagine. And when it came to developing, I didn't want to use up class time with it, so I would take my film to places in the city and pay to get it developed and have contact sheets made.

I hope that helps. You can check out FIT's website (I think it's fitnyc.edu), and look for online communities of FIT students. I used to check one on livejournal, but that was a while ago. Good luck!

~Alexis. Truly, truly, truly outrageous. Write hard!
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Harvard and Yale! ;) Also, Princeton, Columbia, Brown, Johns Hopkins... the best art history programs are generally at the best schools, rather than art schools. That said, if you specifically want your character to go to an art school, places like New York and Chicago (cities that have large, renowned art museums) are probably likely to have the best art history programs *at* art schools. That way, your character has a chance of getting a job in a museum or a gallery when he or she graduates, but it would still be competitive. I minored in art history and thought it was really fun - but that may have been because it was a welcome change from the classes in my major!

Awesome, thank you! I did feel that it was a silly question, not really an art school one, so double thanks!

Ok, a lot of the major points have been covered already, but a few more of my own.

At my school, unlike a lot of other art schools, the men outnumbered the women and most students were heterosexual. This is likely due to the fact that my school's biggest department was industrial design with a strong bent towards automotive design. Not really surprising considering it was in Detroit.

Living off campus was more common than living in the dorms. Most of the people in the dorms were out of state and international students.

At my college the first year was really designed to break you. You came in thinking you were special because you had been the bestest best artist in you high school and then you took your foundations classes and found out that if you did everything the professor asked for in the homework assignment you got a C. You found out that some of your class mates were a lot better than you.

A lot of the freshman shock comes from the fact that, in high school, the staff tends to preach the line that some people are inherently better at art than others and that, therefore, all art should be graded on effort as it cannot really be taught. This is of course total crap. It undermines the very existence of a school for art. Still it takes a while to get used to thinking of art as a skill you have to learn and on which your performance can be graded.

Foundation drawing classes were mandatory for everyone. Including photo majors. Many photo majors were rather bitter about this at first, but a lot of them came to enjoy the classes towards the end. I suspect that a lot of them found out that when simply saying "I can't draw" was no longer an option, most of them could actually draw rather well. They usually were not as good as the fine arts or illustration kids, but they could definitely draw well.

At my school there were special studios set aside for use by the seniors. There was one for each of the majors (i.e. the illustration senior studio, animation senior studio, and so on). They were the only labs with 24 hour access year round, but you had to be in there with at least one other person. This was due to someone having a medical emergency of some sort in one of the labs and the security guard not coming around on his watch for something like 20 minutes. The all the labs were 24 hours the two weeks before mid terms and three weeks before finals, but with the same buddy system requirement.

Also, there was a fair amount of good natured insult humor between the departments. That is to say we all insulted each other based on departmental stereotypes but no real injury was meant. Rather it was just a way of blowing off steam and being able to laugh at ourselves.