THE OFFICE
On any given day, the Office of Career Services at Harvard is bustling with students. A few sit at computers, writing resumes, while others wait patiently to talk with an adviser. Some of these students will set up a meeting with Gail Gilmore, the assistant director at OCS and a specialist in arts careers. Often these students will feel, like Reis-Dennis, that the process of getting a job in the arts is significantly different from getting a job in most other fields. According to Gilmore, however, the two processes are in fact quite similar. “What we would do for somebody in the arts is the same for what we do for somebody in education or government or public service,” Gilmore says. “It's the same process of helping people understand what they want, teaching them the skills—teaching them to write resumes and cover letters and teaching them interview skills and how to network—that will help them find what they're looking for.”
Students looking for jobs in the arts face a few unique challenges, however, that might deter many from their goals. In particular, almost all will be initially unable to support themselves with their art alone and will have to take on a variety of jobs on the side to make a living while still continuing to work on their artistic endeavors. “A lot of students will go to New York to try and be an actor or actress. That usually means SAT tutoring to pay the bills, or working as a waiter or something like that,” says OCS Director Robin Mount.
In response to the critique of students such as Byrd that Harvard doesn’t do enough to facilitate the academic study of the arts, Mount asserts that while such criticism may be fair, students ultimately know what they are getting into when they come to Harvard. “If you look at Yale, they have a fine arts major. Harvard doesn't have that. It does make it hard for students, if that's what they want to do, but then they chose Harvard. They could've chosen a different school,” Mount says.
For many students, however, the decision to pursue arts professionally did not arise until after they had begun their studies at Harvard. The fact that most students wait until their sophomore year to declare a concentration encourages a period of experimentation and exploration before one settles in a particular field. Henderson, for example, spent a good portion of her time at Harvard deciding whether to pursue law or business post-graduation. “It wasn't until fall semester junior year that I decided I needed to pursue acting,” she says.
Other students, such as Ben J. Lorenz ’14, are still not certain what they want to do after graduation. Although the Literature concentrator and aspiring actor plans to move to New York to try his hand at acting, he admits that he may pursue other careers and interests later on. “I'm still not 100 percent convinced that I want to be an actor for the rest of my life. It's something I’ve enjoyed immensely in college and something I’ve been able to work at an outrageous amount and still be interested in, which seems like the kind of thing I should look into as a career,” he says. “But I have no idea what it's like not at this place. My back up would probably be to go back to graduate school in literature and then pursue teaching.”
ROOM FOR REVISION
Despite the recent steps Harvard has taken to increase the presence of the arts in the curriculum, many still find the arts course offerings at Harvard to be wanting. For example, the majority of opportunities in the dramatic arts at Harvard—including both the extracurriculars available and the classes offered as a part of the dramatic arts secondary—are primarily centered on stage acting. For students like Henderson, who are aspiring to become film and television actors, the focus on theater is less than ideal. “I very specifically want to do film and TV acting,” she says. Outside of Harvard Undergraduate Television, the opportunities to practice her skills are meager, she says, and there are currently few Harvard courses that cater to television or cinematic acting. “A lot of my training is coming from the theater side, which would be helpful for a film and TV acting career, but it's not exactly the same thing. That's been tough. I definitely wouldn't say that I've been adequately prepared at Harvard.”
The lack of preparation provided by Harvard will not deter Henderson from pursuing her dreams, however. “The goal is to get to L.A. as quickly as possible,” she says. “I’ve seen friends who were seniors go off into their prospective career paths after graduation, a lot of them doing investment banking and consulting and things that they really didn’t want to do, with the plan of making money for two years before they take the time to follow their dreams.” Such a plan does not appeal to Henderson, even though it may be less financially risky. As she points out, nothing in life is free from risk. “Two years isn't promised. Tomorrow isn't promised,” she says. “So I'm not going to waste time. I'm going to go into it now and pursue my true passion.”
—Staff writer Lulu H. Kirk can be reached at lulu.kirk@thecrimson.com.