Saturday, November 03, 2007
Finding Your Way, Part 1: The Training Question | Academic Programs, Trade Schools, Manufacturer Training
Live Design: "For 20 years, I have been involved in education in lighting. Before that, I had to be educated and trained myself. It was a different time, our industry was much smaller, and information did not flow at the speed of light and the click of a mouse. I was fortunate to grow up in New York City, so my training was a combination of professional exposure and academic experience. So what's the difference between “real-world training” and “academic experience?” Sometimes it's significant, but at other times, there are more similarities than disparities."
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6 comments:
I think the amount of education in the specialized area puts us in the better position than self-training in the industry. I guess it depends on other people, but being able to learn and experience, especially for the theatrical artists, really sets us so much freedom under the safe educational environment. After all, I am here, and trying to prep myself for the harsh real world.
I should say I am biased. I prefer being trained to be specialized in the area that I want to specialized in, as to training in everything else.
And I believe by having an open mind and working at getting more jobs, comes experience and better at the craft we have.
Education is like having the necessary knowledge of what various tools does. Training and experience is from using the tool.
Trade School Pragmatism might just work for me.
I find it interesting that in today's world a school like this, where we get trained to do theatre, wasn't around at some point. I think that with schools like this it's easier for people to move up in the world of theatre. In the time when when schools like this were not to be found people had to find a different way to get to where they wanted to be. This can still be done today and think that both directions have pro's and con's to them. I agree that in this indutry there is so much that you could do that you have to have a good idea of where you want to end up. When you have this which direction you choose will give you something different.
There seems to be much debate recently in the value of formal education. (it was all over the sound list we read for sound design. What it seems to come down to is that to design, a college education seems necessary but to be a technician college is not.
However, if you can afford to go to college it does offer you some valuable life lessons about time maintenance and the interrelations of people. In addition, it gives me time to postpone entering the real world as well as finding out what it is that i want to do exactly.
I find this to be especially interesting as I have been in almost constant debate over what you get out of trade schools versus the "standard" academic setting with a friend of mine who now goes to Full Sail. I just don't get most of the way they decide to run that institution as they have class during ridiculous time periods like 1am to 5am then change it for the next to 10 am to 3pm, saying that doing classes like that helps prepare you for the way the real world works. I guess just don't understand that kind of logic.
This is a great article. And really the exact process I went through when trying to decide where I wanted to take my life and what kind of career I wanted to have. I knew that I had to be involved in art somehow. I needed that creative outlet, and why not try and make a living at that? I was actually torn between Interior Design, Architecture and Theatre and Set Design, but realized that Set Design included all three. So far I feel I made the right choice, and it was definitely a question of, "what do I want?"
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