That won’t fly in The Industry.

October 6, 2025 Newsletter 

Photo from Julia Gifford's Should I stay or should I go?

I’ve been hearing this phrase, or variations on it, since sophomore year. I’m not sure how specific it is to my major (3D animation), or whether versions of it translate to other majors as well. I suspect that the School of Design writ-large has their own equivalents, and maybe Fine Arts just refers to the “real world” or “art world.” The Industry, in this formulation, is less an actual place and more of a concept. The mythical local students ascend to after graduation, like a childhood pet that “left to go live on a farm.” It’s simultaneously brutal and aspirational, something we are supposed to want, and yet also a vague and unsettling hell, a place where artists go to die. 

The Industry is invoked when a student is not living up to the expectations set by the school and the professor. They are reminded, sometimes gently, sometimes harshly, that, in the industry, things are much worse, and that they had better get their shit together, or they don’t stand a chance.

The litany is as follows:

The Industry has 80-90 hour work weeks. The Industry has no paid time off, and few sick days. The typical work day in The Industry is 9-7, including Saturdays. You’re lucky to be anything other than a peon in The Industry, and you should be grateful for any scrap of dignity that you get. And if I’m you don’t want this, or if you complain, or if you get angry about your working conditions, then too bad! Guess you’re not cut out for The Industry. 

I have to assume professors who do this are in a strange sort of bind. On one hand, they don’t want to sugarcoat the brutal realities of The Industry. Things are, or at least can be, this bad, and professors would do students a great disservice by not warning them. I do wonder, however, whether the presentation of this information has a second, more negative consequence in reifying the abuses that are rife within The Industry by treating them as if they are natural, normal, and just. Oftentimes, I suspect that professors believe in the normality of these working schedules and harsh treatments because they themselves were subjected to it, either in school or in The Industry. Or maybe they don’t, and they know on some level that something is wrong, but if they were to acknowledge that these expectations and working schedules have a negative impact on students and industry workers, they would have to admit that they themselves have been negatively impacted, even victimized, by the same processes. This is even more difficult within the epistemic capture of The Industry, where only the strong survive, and the weak are fired at the drop of a hat. To admit struggle is to admit defeat, so the expectation is always to lock in, shut up, and finish the shot. 

Sometimes I suspect there’s a bit of pride at play, a glorification of overwork and overcommitment to make overworked, overcommitted people feel better about how they spend their time. I know I, a certified workaholic who has to put reminders on his phone to stop working and take a break every three hours, have been guilty of this. 

I have empathy for professors who want to prepare their students for the harsh realities of the world outside of college. I think this is well-intentioned, and often a necessary part of higher education if it is done properly. But whenever discussions of The Industry arise, when the litany is delivered, I always find myself thinking it doesn’t have to be that way. That’s the necessary second half of the sentence. Yes, you may be treated like shit in the industry. Yes, you may be expected to work crazy hours for no pay with no health insurance and three sick days per year. But it doesn’t have to be that way. 

It really, truly doesn’t. I know that a common response to this from utilitarian types is that animation, and the arts in general, are “surplus calorie” jobs, the kind of things that are nice to have, but that society could do without if push came to shove. To this I respond that even jobs that are both high skill and incredibly necessary by any measure, like nursing, suffer under many of the same working condition issues that industry artists do, like low pay and long working hours. This isn’t an issue of necessity or societal value, but of exploitation. The good news is, it’s a type of exploitation that we have overcome before and can overcome again. The road ahead of us is long, but we can start trudging along in the classroom, by making it clear that although we may encounter mistreatment in The Industry, we need not take it lying down. We cannot fight for what we deserve until we believe that we deserve it. 

Orion Smith Anderson

3D Animation

Biography:

Orion Smith is a senior in 3D Animation at Pratt Institute. When he’s not working on his thesis or crashing out about the state of the world, you can find him writing, reading any interesting philosophy or nonfiction he can get his hands on (he’ll get into novels soon, he swears), or illustrating.

You can find some of his writing at atiglain.mataroa.blog, and you can find his illustrations @atiglain on Instagram.