So You Earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts – But No Longer Want to Pursue Your Art

Sometimes, four years of something is just plain enough. With the potentially prohibitive cost of changing a major mid-way through school, it shouldn’t come as a shock that a large percentage of B.F.A. holders graduate school with no intention of pursuing their field of study.

Even more numerous are the actors, dancers, painters, writers, and dramaturges who give it a shot for a few years and decide that the lifestyle simply isn’t for them. If either the new grad or the burned out artist sounds like you, you are far from alone.

You might feel that your friend graduating with a degree in Psychology and beginning work in marketing and PR is in a sturdier place than you, if you’re graduating with a B.F.A. but looking to join the white collar world. The funny thing is, you’d be wrong.

As a B.F.A. holder, here are your strengths when it comes to a nine-to-five world job search.

1. You Stand Out

America’s most popular undergraduate degrees are in business and the social sciences. Communications and biology degrees are also up there, in terms of numbers granted. What might that mean for someone whose diploma reads “Drama” or “Creative Writing”?

It means you immediately stand out to resume readers. Someone screening resumes for a PR assistant position sees countless profiles from communications or marketing majors.

Highlight any relevant skills you studied in electives or learned through an internship, and your degree in Creative Writing implies a strong grasp of any kind of writing and proofing skills, not just those directly related to fiction… or just those directly related to PR.

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So You Earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts – But No Longer Want to Pursue Your Art