The Academics
Are Future Artists Getting the Best from their Programs?
Fun fact: there was a moment in time where myself, Julia May Jonas (who wrote the novel Vladimir and created the TV show of the same name on Netflix), and Jennifer Fawcett (whose second book Keep This For Me has become a breakout hit) were all adjunct faculty at Skidmore College.
We were teaching, respectively, in the Theater, English, and Cinema departments. Each of us was already starting to accomplish huge things, yet the school would not make any of us full-time faculty, which is why my feelings about academia are not super high.
Because for the departments and the students… this was crazy.
I was teaching comic book creation and IP creation- and a few months later would see King Spawn sell 500k copies of its first issue. And then get a development deal at Universal.
Julia would have a hit book, a hit TV show and plays off Broadway.
Jennifer would have plays touring Canada and two hit books from Simon and Schuster.
Classes by us were full. Students were getting tons of access as we were rising in real time.
And… the college did nothing
It was insane not to create full-time jobs for the people I just mentioned; the educational benefits for the students would have been innumerable. But that’s not how academia works, and when you say it out loud, people get mad. I wonder if in the future we’ll have new types of schools or colleges with different types of accreditation. Colleges are becoming outrageously too expensive.
Maybe that’s what this substack will become…. a new form of school for artists? What if you could use this type of forum to get a high level writing education from high level artists? Hmmmm….
This week, I got asked to speak at the University of Southern California in the fall, in a class that will specifically be about becoming your own “one-person studio”. This is everything right now. How do you rely on no one? It’s probably the only way to get a foot in the door and the only way to actually make money. With each contract, ground is lost by the Writers Guild and the Actors Guild (I don’t know anything about the Directors Guild; maybe they’re doing amazing). Healthcare continues to go up, the amount of available jobs keeps going down, and everyone is kind of trapped in the same situations over and over again.
I’ve survived because I generate and create and control my own work. I know how to do it and how to teach it.
