The University of Oregon

Date: Oct 11 2005
Major: Art & Design Department (This Major's Salary over time)
University of Oregon's general education experience has been fairly desirable but my experience as a Multimedia/Digital Arts major is a joke. I've attended Art Institute of Seattle then Lane Community College before finally making residence at UO, as a Multimedia major at all three schools. The multimedia department at UO is forgotten, and ignored and there's a good reason why. The Art school decided that Mutltmedia Design would not accept the name "Multimedia Design" as they were not teaching design so the major has now been changed to "Digital Arts". How so very true. Nearly every class as a Multimedia major has been a random hodgepodge of whatever the professor thinks is relevant to him/her. Also someone has the bright idea that every class should be taught by alternating professors, that way no one professor can work out a solid curriculum or specialize in any one subject, and with such a broad major covering everything and anything from web design, video, audio to music, interface design and programming who'd want that?

Ironically every teacher claims not to teach software but instead ideas/art whatever making little class time dedicated on how one achieves creating a piece of art when in the real world people operate by standards… Let's face it, to make it as a Graphic Designer you MUST know Photoshop and Illustrator. There's no other way to to teach it. Then many classes the teachers will want to absolve the technology aspect. In a web art class, its not uncommon to see students working with scissors and paper. I happened to luck out being extremely self motivated/self educated as the geekiery of my major has always been a hobby for me. Also in my major, there's a huge preoccupation with being avante-garde. Its routine for professors to give assignments and have students not follow the guidelines at all and be applauded for it. There's so much attention to being different that most student work is more or less junk as they're concentrating on being different rather than creating solid pieces. While admittedly, I'm rather middle ground in the scheme of the populace of UO (which would make me a tree hugger at many surround schools and yes I'd call myself somewhat liberal), Multimedia department defines liberal education gone awry as anything goes. The over concern with art and no judgement makes for a lax environment. I've managed to MISS a midterm, and several projects and land a B+ in class. There's simply no motivation or real world skills being taught. Other schools have classes prepping Multimedia majors to make brilliant portfolios to land big jobs, UO has none.

Luckily, most of University of Oregon doesn't quite follow the credo of the Multimedia ways. Friends in other majors are baffled and mystified by what goes on in my department. Any time I take classes outside my major I've found that I feel I actually learn and people in my classes are often much more friendly and approachable as there's much less preoccupation with being art. I'd recommend University of Oregon if you stay away from the big "Art" majors. I've become incredibly lazy thanks to my major and skate by simply on my own natural talent for what I do as I've been doing it so long.

In the end I'm left with a love/hate relationship with my school.