Ryan and I would allow our conversations have a life of their own. Often times, they’d spiral out of control into a deep dark place. Talking about life in the twenty first century, life in America, life in high school, life after death. We’d let them go wherever they pleased. Since Ryan and I were both art and design majors, our talks had a common theme of art. Whether or not editorial models were cool. Whether or not Jaco Van Dormael was wise. Even after he’d left for college, these debacles continued.

When asked to do this project, I thought, “I guess I’ll interview my mom.” I had no idea who I could have an interesting conversation with for the curiosity conversation. Once I had decided that a talk with my mom would be too dull, I started going through a list in my head of the people I could talk to.

My sister? She’s too busy with grad school.

My brother? I have no idea what to ask him.

Sydney? Also too busy.

I don’t know why it took me so long to think of Ryan. Our conversations were always so intriguing. And based off of how fast it takes him to respond to my texts, he’s never occupied. 

There was actually only one reason why I wanted to interview Ryan. It was because he went to art school. He attends the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. One of the major topics of discussion in humanities was higher education in the art world. Specifically studio art. Was it important? Or could you get by without it? When having this discussion in class, it was heavily agreed upon that higher education should not be a necessity to be successful as a studio artist.

I orchestrated my interview prior to calling him. Building questions that were simple at first, “What’s your major?”, “Why’d you choose to go to SAIC?” And then creating more complicated questions as we continued, “Why would one go to an art school rather than a university?” “What have you learned at college that you couldn’t teach yourself.”

 

Maybe Ryan and I were not the right people to be having this discussion. We were not art majors, we were design majors. He, created objected. I, interior design. Nevertheless, it was interesting to have this talk from a different perspective. If you want to become an interior designer, you have to get your certification. Without this certification, you cannot call yourself an interior designer and you cannot do renovations. And in order to gain your certification, you have to have a BFA and pass a qualifier test. This is also true with many other design majors such as the one that Ryan is in.