Are You a “Starving Artist” or an “Aspiring Professional”?

By: Rachel Slaiman
Musicians are probably the ones that are the most associated with the term “starving artist”. Could this term “starving artist” mean the same thing for every industry? Well if you think about it, some nurses want to be a doctor, an accounting student wants to be a certified public accountant or CPA, a business professional may strive to be a manager or CEO, and an ordinary person who likes to write for pleasure may strive to see that he or she wants to be an author.
So are the above scenarios considered “starving artist” or an “aspiring professional”. If there was a list of some qualities to each side, it would look something like this.

Starving Artist Aspiring Professionals
Will do anything to get noticed Go out for their dreams
Promote themselves too much Connect with people in their industry
Act as though they know everything before they are in the job Intern and may even do some temporary or freelance work
Possess qualities of stubbornness and/or setting unrealistic goals Possess qualities of drive, determination, and setting reasonable goals

Looking at each side, some people may say that some of these attributes can be reversed and some may not even be true, but that is the point. Is there one thing that labels us to say that you are a “starving artist” or an “aspiring professional”?
Could it be how you label yourself when you are looking for a job?
Really looking at these terms, can be frightening and you may find yourself debating back and forth on which you may be. Though that should not be the case and seeing these terms used in other articles, the authors are trying to generalize a point. There should not be just “one” term that defines a job seeker; rather their strengths, core competencies, and knowledge should be able to show through on their own. This may be hard to recognize at first because everyone is so critical of themselves and especially for job seekers, each time we see a “no thank you” email, we can’t help but to criticize ourselves about what went wrong, why the recruiter or whomever said no.
So to answer the question, which term is correct? The answer is that you decide on how you want to be identified, as a “starving artist” or an “aspiring professional”.