Hold your head high, arts students - grads

A panel of four successful Dalhousie University arts degree graduates was assembled Friday to demonstrate the many options available to current arts students.

“I think (an arts degree) is a wonderful foundation for nearly anything you want to do.”

Dalhousie University President Tom Traves introduced a career panel discussion on Friday featuring four panelists, all of whom have become successful with an arts degree. A Dalhousie graduate himself, with a Bachelor of Arts in History, Traves said he could relate to the conversation in a very personal way.

The discussion was called ‘Busting the myths of arts students’ and was organized by Dalhousie’s Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences.

About 60 undergraduate arts students gathered in the McCain Building’s Scotiabank Auditorium seeking reassurance that they will have career options after graduation.

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With a little creativity, arts students can turn a diploma into a career.

The panelists included Michael Savage, Tanya Shaw Weeks, Sinclair Stewart and Shawna Hoyte. They all drew on their own experiences to demonstrate that it is definitely possible to forge a career with an arts degree.

Gaining knowledge, changing views

Each of the panelists came from a very different background. The one thing they all shared was an arts degree from Dalhousie. One important lesson they all mentioned they learned from their undergraduate program was communications skills.

“Communication is key in your career, personal life, all areas,” said Shaw Weeks, president and CEO of the company Unique Solutions, a high-tech body measurement company that helps people order custom-fit clothing. “You have to be clear with your personal expectations as well as with your expectations of others, and I think I learned this from my degree.”

Hoyte, a lawyer, professor and therapist said her life has been an ongoing learning process. In addition to important writing and communications skills, she said she will always remember some of the broader, general lessons she learned from her arts degree.

“Having an arts degree made everything else easier,” she explained. “It gave me the opportunity to see a whole different world, put new challenges in front of me and helped me to eventually become a role model for the African community.”

All of the panelists agreed that an arts degree won’t immediately get most people their dream job upon graduating, and that students have to learn to look for, and even create their own opportunities.

“The degree can open a lot of doors for you,” said Hoyte. “But you have the responsibility to look for those opportunities.”

Currently a Member of Parliament for Dartmouth-Cole Harbour, Savage worked in a number of different sales and business careers after graduating. He said his career path was never certain, but his degree started him in the right direction.

“I know people who have planned out their career step by step,” he said. “My path could be described more as a semi-purposeful meandering, but my degree helped me gain a general knowledge of issues as well as the ability to think analytically. You also learn to work well with people.”

More than a career

Although most of the discussion was focused on ways that the skills learned from an arts degree can be transformed into viable career opportunities, Stewart, the Globe and Mail’s New York bureau chief reminded the group that this should not necessarily be the motivation for pursuing an arts degree, or any other type of higher education. He suggested that we should become educated simply for the sake of the learning experience. 

“I find it irritating that we’re sitting down and justifying an arts degree,” he says. “I didn’t come to Dalhousie to get a career, I think that’s a perverse way of looking at it.”

At the same time, Stewart said he did learn things from his degree that helped him in his journalism career.

“The degree was helpful in terms of advancing an argument and thinking critically,” he said. “Luck, and forming connections was also important.”

All the panelists agreed that the general knowledge and skills they learned during their arts degree ended up being important in their careers.

Savage left the group with one final warning:

“Beware of getting a history degree. There’s always the risk you might become an MP.”

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