I went to art school. All in all, it was a great experience, but I tend to be a bit self-deprecating when I talk about it. Especially when I get together with old friends from high school, who all have Masters degrees in things like public policy, or worse, who are finishing up their PhDs in chemistry or neuroscience or whathaveyou. It's not that I'm embarrassed about being an artist. Or that I think I'm not as smart as them. I am. It's just that my school didn't have classes like, you know, math. And it's easy to make fun of myself for that.

It was only recently that I realized that my art school education had taught me one of the most valuable lessons in my life, much more applicable than calculus: I learned how to fail. And how to not be afraid of failure.

If you're not familiar with the art school routine, it goes like this: each week you get an assignment—draw, paint, design, whatever—at the end of class, and at the beginning of the next week's class you pin your work up for critique. Critique in front of the whole class, by the whole class. It teaches you to talk about your work, and other people's work constructively and effectively. But it also teaches you how to take criticism, and that you won't always succeed on the first, second, third try. You toughen up. You detach from your work a bit, which is hard, because creating anything—art, craft, writing—is a very personal experience.

I don't think anyone ever gets to the point where they don't feel upset if a project they are really proud of gets ripped into... years later it still hurts if a design I really like gets rejected by a client. The point isn't about detaching yourself completely, but rather about being able to share your work easily. And that's my point.

It's hard to show other people your work, especially in an open forum like the internet, where anyone can leave a comment anonymously. It's hard to have the courage to think that what you're making is something that other people might actually want to buy, and to open up a shop. But the more you do it, the more you put yourself out there, the less scary it gets. And when you see that lots of people are in the same boat, like in art class, you remember that nobody gets it right 100% of the time. (And the ones who appear to—trust me—they don't think that they do.)

For me, this is a lesson I've been taking out of the art context and bringing into my everyday life, too. If you're scared of failure you don't challenge yourself—in life or in work.

image: digital print by linocutboy