Featured Student Voice: Hana Terpstra

Hana Terpstra is a current senior in high school with a focus in art and design and a love for storytelling. She believes community and learning how to learn are vital, and hopes that all future students get to learn these values.

Making sure all kids get to learn important topics like these, as well as skills like connection and a desire to learn, is a message I’d love to help spread. My main interest is in the arts; Almost all of them, from sewing to writing to painting to drawing. Recently, I have been looking into art applications for colleges and art-based scholarships, and I came to realization that I don’t really know which art I want to focus in. The whole college search is a very anxiety-causing process, but this specific fear, that I have to make decisions about my future when I don’t even know what I want to do yet, was the most looming of all.

Then I thought about one of the most defining books for me- Scott Mccloud’s “Understanding Comics”. In it, he describes the art of making comics like an apple- (though perhaps an onion is more accurate) with different layers. From the outside in, it goes surface, craft, structure, idiom, form, idea/purpose. The metaphor works for the entirety of art as well; Starting out, most people’s art is “surface level”, then as their craft develops they begin to play with structure, genre, what form the art takes, and the central idea of the whole thing. I am fascinated with that last one; the question of “Why am I doing this?” Though my art is just “surface”, the concept of a reason is appealing.

Taking this idea in mind, and my anxiety over looming portfolio requirements, I created an experiment. I would try and find my “reason” the best way I knew how – through research – and then use that new information in my art. A piece of visual art advice I always get is “draw from real life, not from others art – at least to start.” This is given because learning how to see the world and communicate it through your own lens is critical in defining your style – but perhaps, it also could be critical in find an interest, a reason.

So I took to the internet and began to research, putting what I found into a slideshow presentation. Then, I came to another realization. The skills I had learned in school, from reading material to advice from my art teachers, even from science projects and English reports – they were vital for this project. I used my friend, a fellow art student, to keep me on track to my goal. Even the purpose of my search- curiosity, questioning- was something taught in school! I was using these skills to my benefit in my craft, something I hadn’t noticed before. I am very lucky. If I didn’t have the opportunities I had in middle and high school, my visual library, skills, and connections would be much worse. I wouldn’t have had the interest in learning, in reading books, in finding advice, in keeping motivation to stick through a big project like this – if I didn’t have the desire to learn.

And that is something education instilled in me. Heck, even now, writing this, I am using foreshadowing and formatting in an essay-like structure. It’s not just about the topics in school – though those are certainly helpful as well – but the skills. And just now, going into my last year of high school, I’m starting to understand what my teachers have been saying all along – the skills you build here will help carry you through life later. Carrying this knowledge with me makes me feel a little more prepared for life. Even if I don’t know where I’m going, I know I have the skills to get there.

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