I’ve been through a lot of school.  One of the things colleges promise these days is to give the student skills for the “real world” but that hasn’t been my experience at all.  And I’m not saying that college should provide real world experience, since college isn’t the real world.  College has a different purpose: it’s purpose is to stop and ask why.

Regular readers of my blog know that I’m a jack of all trades, and I’m pretty comfortable operating at a professional level in many of those skills.  Currently I’m a software engineer, and I’m asked periodically what I studied in school to become a software engineer, and I usually give the short answer, “I didn’t. I just liked doing it.”  The slightly longer answer is that I took some entry level programming classes, shrugged about the strange things the professor was asking us to do, and got on with the business of graduating.  When I graduated I saw all the exciting things happening with DotComs and wanted in, so I taught myself.

Likewise, I’m a potter.  It’s something I had wanted to do since the first time I saw someone wheel-throwing.  And even though I’ve taken “classes” in pottery, it was mostly showing up and working at it until one day someone offered me money.

But probably the most demanding “real world” I’ve ever worked in is as a professional musician.  I play tuba with a number of chamber groups and sub regularly with some regional orchestras.  The transition from awkward amateur to seasoned professional was something that happened during college, but not because of college.  My college experience opened the door, and I stepped through.

Performing is a yes or no proposition: either the listener is happy with what you did, or they aren’t.  And hopefully, the person who writes the check is happy with your work and calls you again.  It’s a very clear barometer of your skill and professionalism; one that doesn’t really exist in college, where an A is passing, but so is a B and a C, and D too.

I write about this world of college vs “real world” because my eyes are focusing on arts administration: as a volunteer, as a passionate participant, as an experienced professional, and aspiring outsider, and as an educator.  My college studies in arts administration seemed a good bit like a puppet show, like many of my college classes.  We pretended to go through various steps as if we were in the real world.  The problem is that the real world doesn’t have a text book, and it’s pass or fail, like getting a call back on a gig.  And I have some criticisms of the textbooks I read, as they seem to exist in a space in between the philosophical “why” of college, and the practical “how” of the real world.

With that said, I’m going to be reviewing some of the books on arts administration I’ve come across in my studies.  These reviews are not meant as criticisms in their own right, but to open a discussion about the void between theory and practice, the observed and the experienced.