Anyone who knows me knows I’m a theater major, it’s one of the things I’m most passionate about in life and I can talk about it for hours. But not a lot of people know that I’m a double major with my second degree coming from Economics. And now that you know that you might be thinking, “Oh, smart boy, getting a degree for when theater doesn’t work out” or whatever else I’d probably expect to hear from a 65-year-old uncle around Christmas time, well that and “Y la novia?”
But that part might be more of a latinx thing, I don’t know, you tell me. Either way, I’m just going to clarify something for everyone, I am an Econ major because I wanted to be, not because my mother made it a requirement or because I’m unsure about my future; not saying that there’s anything wrong with either of those, sometimes you gotta do what you gotta do, but for me I fall into neither of those categories.
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I chose to pursue a degree in both economics and theater, because I would hopefully like to run my own theater company one day. It’s a dream that I’ve had for a while and hopefully will get to make a reality at some point down the road, and realistically having a background in economics and management would make that a lot easier for me to do in the long run. My econ major is to help further my goals that I want to pursue with theater, it’s as simple as that. Now I’m fully aware that theater, in general, will not be an easy field to get job security in and I’m okay with that because it means I get to do something I love when it works out. And at this point, you probably noticed that I just said “when”, as if I know that I will get work in the theater, maybe you even think I’m a little cocky, well I’m not, I just have refuse to have doubts.
I remember I was talking to an econ professor at one point about a potential internship opportunity I was considering applying for; this professor just happened to grow up as a dancer and a musician and so we talk all the time about the arts. Regardless, I asked her about if she thought the internship was a good fit for me, she then told me about when she went to college and how she was considering going to study dance but her parents talked her out of it and so instead she went on to get her degree in economics, and as much as she loves economics part of her can’t help but wonder if she made a mistake choosing to pursue econ instead of dance.
I never really did get the answer on whether or not that internship was a good fit for me, I never actually even applied for the internship, I think my professor knew I was having doubts about potentially going into the field of theatre and if I got the internship I’d get to comfortable with Economics and potentially just drop theatre as anything I’d ever want to pursue. So you see I’m not cocky, it’s just that as an artist I’ve learned that if you let even a shred of doubt into your head about the work that you do and whether or not it will be successful than you start failing. Even if no one else believes in your abilities you need to believe in yourself.
The other thing to add on top of this is just that just because I’m an artist doesn’t mean I can’t have other interest. Even larger is the misunderstanding that these things cannot overlap with each other. After all, art is in everything, politics, social issues, nature, even math; last year I was in a show that was inspired by chaos theory, even now I’m brainstorming ideas for a show revolving around game theory, art is inspired by the entire universe and everything in it. So don’t discredit or disrespect us by saying that we don’t believe enough in our own work or by calling our other majors safety, we just strive to understand our world as best as possible to do the best work possible.
