Brick City: A Home Away From Home

Written by Ellie Edwards

Photographed by Mindy Welland

Modeled by Ellie Edwards and Gracie Potter

When a person goes to college, they are often unsure of what exactly they are there for. Most times, your parents force you to go and, well, you’re only 18, so you have no idea what you want out of life. You are still just a kid, and no one knows anything about the real world until they are smacked in the face by it. College can be stressful freshman year because you are forced to choose one thing in life that suits you for a career forever…no pressure, right? When contemplating all of the different options, you’re going back and forth in your head, hearing your dad’s voice saying to do whatever makes you the most money, and get into a field that will give you financial success. Then, on the other end, you’re telling yourself, that’s not what I want, I want to be happy, to find a career I’m passionate about, who cares about money?! Well, honestly, that internal battle never really goes away. That’s just the way life goes. In my personal experience, I went the passionate route. I decided I wanted to pursue art, I was going to explore the different mediums and find where I belonged. However, choosing a major was only the beginning, now I have to get good at it. Good enough to get a career working in it?? That instills a whole new kind of fear in a person.

So picture this, you’re getting ready for the first day of classes and notice you will be heading off campus, to a different campus, one called Brick City. Once you arrive, you come to a cluster of brick buildings right in the heart of Springfield, laid out in front of a set of train tracks. You certainly weren’t expecting to be traveling that far from the dorm on the first day. You realize the people around you are all there for the same purpose: this is the arts campus. How exciting, it’s so diverse and so playful, everybody there wants to express themselves through creativity. Fast forward to the end of the semester, you’ve spent countless hours at Brick City, logging who knows how much studio time. You register for the next semester’s classes and realize, I’m going to be here for a while.

Brick City is a place where undergraduate students studying to achieve degrees in The Arts come together. After spending years getting all too familiar with the buildings themselves, they begin to feel like a second home. Lunch between classes in he student lounge, 7 am cram sessions before your Art History exam, and even those rough weekend nights in the studio. This place gets to know you pretty well. And not only the place itself but the people within it have so much effect as well. The professors who spend their time pushing you to do better, giving you brutally honest feedback when you need it, and complementing you on your strengths simultaneously. You think you spend a lot of your time there? Try being them. These people spend their lives trying to train the artists of tomorrow, and in my experience, they are doing a wonderful job at it. I feel as though during my time at Brick City, I have come to appreciate and even befriend many of my professors, and I genuinely know I will take the advice they have given me with me throughout life. I think my classmates would agree. And I feel the same about them as well. I have watched my classmates grow and develop their skills as artists, and it has been such a pleasure. It is crazy to watch people grow. I still feel like a child. Yet I look around and somehow we’re adults.

Being able to make friends through your mutual love of art is such a lucky thing. Watching graduating seniors wrap up their portfolios and begin setting up for their senior exhibition makes me so excited to see where life takes them next. Looking back on time spent at Brick City, it feels like it passed in the blink of an eye, you look away for one second, and suddenly four years have passed, and you’re applying to jobs that come with a 401k. What a truly bittersweet feeling, I’m so grateful for my time spent here, for the friends I’ve made, and for the lessons I have learned along the way.