A Message from Dean Nancy M. Stuart

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It’s all true, but I want to highlight another aspect of a creative career and a creative life.

On a recent Sunday, I was listening to Dr. Atul Gawande on the local NPR station. He is a medical doctor and author of several books. He quoted poet Annie Dillard saying “how we spend our days is how we spend our lives,” and he asked his listeners to consider “What a good day looks like?” He was relating how living and doing things that matter lead to health and well-being. He said that “well-being is about the reasons one wishes to be alive.”

I know from my own experience in photography that the motivation to express oneself, to communicate experiences in such a way that others may know who we are, is a tool for achieving psychological integration and emotional well-being.

Author and alternative medicine advocate Deepak Chopra observed that “the single most important factor for health and well-being is that we make something creative from our existence.” He continues to state that “the arts play an important role in our ability to think, problem solve and remember.”

Brené Brown, research professor at the University of Houston, said in her recent book

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, “We want to be part of something larger than us, it has to be real, true belonging only happens when we present our authentic imperfect selves to the world.”

Parents probably know from a few late-night phone calls that their son or daughter has been presenting their authentic and imperfect selves to their faculty and classmates for four years now. They have had to brave uncertainty and criticism during weekly verbal critiques of their work and, I contend, they have learned how to trust others and themselves in the process.

Author Toni Morrison gave a commencement address at Sarah Lawrence College in 1988; her conclusion is as true today as then: “the function of [contemporary] education must be to produce humane human beings.”

So, what does a good day look like to you? Celebrating your commencement with family and friends is a “pretty good day” but you can also look forward to sharing your authentic self with the world through your art. You are part of something that doesn’t require you to change who you are–it only requires you to be who you are.