In 8th grade, I was told by my counselor that I had to take an art credit to graduate high school. Notoriously, I’ve been awful at art. I was the kid who couldn’t color inside the lines and brought home pottery sculptures that looked more like ugly rocks than the turtle I was going for. So safe to say, I didn’t really want to waste one of my precious class blocks taking an art class instead of a class I genuinely enjoyed and wanted to take.

But alas, I had to get my art credit and chose to take the school’s jewelry class because I thought it would be more interesting than a class like painting-which reminded me of my middle school art classes I was so awful at. I was wrong about jewelry being different. Jewelry was easily my hardest class my freshman year and I seriously regret having to take it. My teacher was super sweet and I made some unexpected friends, but I was in way over my head with the rigor of the course. What I thought would be a class of making beaded bracelets, was actually a class filled with metalworking and soldering.

 I would walk in everyday, grab my thumb guard and saw and hack away at some metal until I could make a somewhat normal looking shape. It also didn’t help that the people near me took the class because they genuinely enjoyed art and were incredible at it. So I just came into class everyday and repeated my routine until I could make something somewhat presentable. Some days it was rings that were way too big or macrame friendship bracelets that were slowly coming undone. 

My peril with my freshman year jewelry class encapsulates the same problem lots of students face every year when they have to take art classes that they don’t want to be in. People thrive when they can select classes that they are interested in and passionate about, but they tend to dismiss or strongly dislike classes they are required to take instead of the electives they like. Art classes should still be pushed to students who have creative tendencies as it allows for them to have creative and self-guided learning. But for students like me, an art requirement simply fills a slot of my class schedule I could have filled with another class I genuinely enjoyed and would learn more from. 

Although I persevered through jewelry and somehow ended up with an A, I should’ve never been required to take a class that I wasn’t interested in or wouldn’t teach me life lessons that are vital to my academic career. Instead, counselors should keep an elective slot open for students and allow them to explore other course offerings instead of requiring at least one art elective. This allows for people to take art if they want to, but it also allows students like me to explore other subjects that sound cool, like PLTW and International Relations, instead of counting down the minutes in a jewelry class I never wanted to take.