Off to College Soon, + Feature

This is my advice as someone who has been a student, administrator, and teacher at art schools in NY:

1. Don't think that just because Digital Design is a non-credit course that you don't have to go and learn everything. There's going to be a digital revolution in the next fifteen years with this thing called "the internet" and pretty much all commercially-viable art is going to be produced with the programs you learn in that class. Or, at least, this is the advice I wish someone gave me back in 1994, when I was a freshman. Now that I read it, it makes no sense because it only really applied back then... I seem to have missed the tech revolution, and now I can't do anything but draw. OK, I've got some better stuff in the next #s.

2. Under no circumstances should you neglect your art history or philosophy courses. Seriously, all kidding aside, no one becomes a good artist on technique alone. The "art" in art is not the ability to use the pen tool or whatever - it's in knowing what forms of expression are genuinely meaningful, and what's just mindless. I've known tons of artists who are extremely skilled draftspersons, but whose work is totally boring (and even stupid) because all they can do is imitate photography. Artistic imagination (and this goes for comics as well as anything else) is helped greatly by looking at other peoples' stuff and thinking about how it works. It's not "stealing" and it's not "uncreative" - it's just good sense.

3. Art school is literally the most fun you will ever have. Feel free to overdo it for a little while, but stay away from heroin. Seriously.

4. What that other guy said about ego is spot-on. It sounds harsh, but you have to be crushed to bits before you can be built up again. A lot of learning is letting go what you think you know. When I look back on the person I was at 18, I'm glad I got rid of a lot of stuff. That's not to say that it's all worthless - the trick is being able to sense when you should let go and when not. I had this one friend who objected to everything her teachers said because "it wasn't how (she) does things." Six years later, I ran into her while she was working in a shoe store (and she wasn't even the manager or something...).

5. Don't be the sucky roommate who leaves a mess everywhere, but if any of your other roommates is that roommate, try to be chill about it. I mean, don't be a pushover, but messes aren't the end of the world, and you'll feel a lot better just to overlook crap once in a while. And, as an addendum to this one, try to move off-campus as quickly as possible. I did it in my sophomore year, and it was just so much better.

That's about all I've got. Good luck!