What do you do with a "useless degree?"

When I started college, some 110 years ago now...give or take a few, I was sure what I wanted to be...an analytical chemist. UM, but wait....all these years later I've been a lot of things but never that. That's because a chemistry major became an education major, then a sociology major and finally a Theater major, with a Sociology minor (3 credits shy of a math minor...only student teaching lacking for secondary education).  That I think is the beauty (and to some. the curse) of a liberal arts education.  It makes me very sad that lack of emphasis of the well-rounded liberal arts aspect of college these days.  There is still some element most places...but it seems that the attitude these days is that it is all about the $$$...and who can blame anyone, student debt is out of hand.  But I digress.

I like to joke that my Theater Arts degree and $3 would get me a latte at Starbucks...and looked at one way, that's true enough.  But the things I gained from that degree and my time at Upper Iowa University have stayed with me life long in interesting and, I think, life enhancing ways. (Yes there was some bad stuff, and yes that stuck with me too...but that's far less important now than it was then)

There's the proof.  I was a theater geek.  There are several people in this article I'm still connected to...and I am in the upper right photo...the be-robed philosophy master with the ridiculously long wavy hair.

So what did I learn from a theater degree that still serves me 40 years later as a professor and as a human being?  From acting I learned presence and poise in front of people (vital as a prof).  I learned to listen and hear the cues before reacting and speaking.  I learned that every performance no matter how familiar is different...that if you are doing it right, you are not performing (or lecturing or whatever) at people, you are creating an experience with them and that you can learn and grow as much from the experience as you hope your audience does.  I will not deny the appeal in the acting part of my degree of "being someone else" for at least a little while.  Partly, I will admit, because teenage angst lead me to want to be other than myself sometimes. But one of the things you can learn from that if you approach acting that way (and not everyone does), is the trick of being able to take someone else's viewpoint, while still holding on to your own.  I guess I'd say it honed a sort of empathy I already had, and it has been invaluable over the years.

I love learning the history of theater, and the theory.  I even taught Introduction to Theater for UIU at the Madison Center for awhile.  I learned  to look at the characters and to see that I did not aspire to the part of the star (though where else but theater could I have been, for a brief moment the glamorous Judith Bliss, English stage star?), but rather the dramatic foil, the behind the scenes character that ever so subtly makes thing happen.  This position appealed to me (still does) in theater and in life.

By learning stagecraft and doing some assistant directing I learned what details might be important in creating an illusion and what might not.  My passion in this area was costume...something that has obviously stuck with me as evidenced by the costume photos below (and many more posted yearly).

I learned how all the parts, actors, directors, backstage, audience etc.  come together to make meaning of a performance.  Academically it is no surprise that when I wrote my dissertation "Information Behavior and Meaning Making in Virtual Play Spaces: A Case Study of City of Heroes" that my meaning-making framework came directly from social dramaturgy, with roots in theater and sociology.

I learned the joy of creating and the joy of making people happy (or sometimes making them think more deeply or feel something important).  And these things are still important to me today.  So, useless degree?  Financially maybe.  But in terms of the person I now am and hope to continue to be...very much the opposite.