To Tattoo or not to Tattoo by Jessica

To Tattoo or not to Tattoo by Jessica - February 2019 Scholarship Essay

As weird and unconventional as this sounds, but my dream job is to be a tattoo artist. I know what you're thinking, why would I possibly do that when I could be doing something like science, math, even philosophy, why in the world would I do tattoos for a living? Well, Why not? I'm an artistic person, which means a lot of the time, I'm that student who sits in the back of the classroom (or by the window if the view's nice) and either doodles or zones out when the teacher's talking ( to my teachers, you've all had one in your career, I just happen to turn out to be that one). Art is freedom, expression, and exciting, especially for a socially awkward, people-hating, person like me. Art frees me from the expectations of society and, of course, the idea that I want to do something besides tattoos.

So why bother with college if I want to tattoo? Well, it's a little complicated. Yes, I would love to do tattoos, but there are other things that interest me, like psychology, business, philosophy, and there's no telling that ten, fifteen years down the line, I will definitely be a tattoo artist, because as a female, it's hard to break into the industry. Trust me, I'm not playing the gender card, it's the truth, the tattoo industry is male dominated (as is many other industries, looking at you, engineering) and there are few female tattoo artists, even fewer that are well-known and respected in the industry. You could probably count the number of well-known female tattoo artists on one hand (Kat Von D, Kelly Doty, Ryan Ashely Malarkey, to name a few).

So the question remains: why bother with college? The answer: to learn. I'm still young and irrational, so maybe the idea that I want to be tattoo artist is irrational (my friends totally think so), so college is a place for me to understand myself and really see if tattoos is really for me. if tattoos is the way to go, then in college, I'd definitely be looking to do a lot of art classes to improve my art, accumulate knowledge of art, and allow myself to be the best I can be with art because tattoo is art, albeit permanent, but still art. There's always room to learn and grow in art and I admit, college is not the place to get experience, but it is the place for knowledge. Before anything, I need to know what I'm doing to be confident enough to permanently mark someone else's body. To me, I still feel like I have a lot more to learn, about art, about myself, and about my future dream job.

Like I said, being a tattoo artist is probably not something you hear everyday coming out of a student's mouth, but what can I say? People always say you can be anything you want to be, so why not be a tattoo artist?