Alternative Art Forms by Jorge

Alternative Art Forms by Jorge - July 2014 Scholarship Essay

It was senior year in high school, and I'd become largely uninterested in academic subjects not having to do with art. Art was my carapace of sorts—it was there when I needed it, and I needed it often. Shy, and often-times crippled with social anxiety, I could scarcely bear the prospect of meeting people or being asked to work in groups, and retreating into the school library with my sketchbook whenever the opportunity presented itself usually seemed like a good solution. There, I'd while away the time, convincing myself that other people weren't interesting in a vain effort to alleviate my insecurity, and soon, other academic subjects became this way. Math was too cold and unfeeling. History was boring. Science classes, though at times stimulating, were tedious. Little else caught my attention with as much zeal as the smooth black lines produced by a new pen, or daydreaming about living in a loft and becoming a painter. Then, with my time in high school fast coming to a close, I was placed in Mr. Cannon's Macroeconomics class.

I immediately noticed that Mr. Cannon was unlike any teacher I'd had before. He stressed class interaction—seemingly intangible ideas were literally reduced to play-dough, with students trading hand-made donuts for snakes while learning about incentives, scarcity, and the production of economic goods. Tournaments were held in which students were given fake money to invest in the stock market, and classes competed with each other in order to determine who best understood Market Equilibrium, Aggregate Demand/Supply models, and Phillips curves. Slowly, but surely, my social anxiety eroded away. I was engaged, and economics was something I became wildly interested in.

Perhaps most importantly, however, Mr. Cannon's approach to teaching, coupled with Macroeconomics itself, sparked an urge in me to better understand how things work. To be able to describe something as complex as human behavior and exchange economies at a global level was astonishing, and I'd come to class every day filled with questions about everything from how the Fed conducts monetary policy to the workings of Socialism. And while economics was incredibly interesting in its own right, its essence—of attempting to understand complex market processes through mathematical formulas and plots—that's what drew me.

Physics and mathematics, which I'd previously considered to be rather unappetizing, were suddenly interesting. I became fascinated with the fact that forces and waves could be described through relatively simple equations; that specific kinds of infinities could be thought of as being larger or smaller relative to each other. I realized that deconstructing a mathematical theorem or calculating the angular acceleration of a rotating object could very well be thought of as an art form. There was a beauty in other academic disciplines—those not directly having to do with art—which I'd failed to acknowledge in all those years of quietly drawing in the library.

Having Mr. Cannon as my Macroeconomics teacher broke me out of that carapace. Art is still a very important part of my life, but there are other interests, too. As I wait to begin my studies this fall, I can hardly wait to expose myself to new ideas.