The Renaissance. An era epitomizing rebirth. A turned leaf for literature, art and philosophy.

As high schoolers, we are faced with many social pressures, stress from home, and the ever burdening thought of college. To escape the monotonous current of life, students at Homestead indulge in many hobbies. Common liberations like sports and popular forms of art like sketches and painting are discussed on a daily basis, but a wave of creativity brings a lot more noteworthy art forms to the surface.

Video edits, a more recent addition, allow its creators to express their feelings and emotions through music, pictures, tempo and beats, just like other artists.

“I think that making video edits… isn’t categorized as an art because people don’t first recognize it as an art. Just like art, we are able to use different factors such as music, colors and different photos to really bring out the message you’re trying to portray in the edit,” said freshman Megan Ventura.

In art forms like drawing, artists might face some adversities like not having access to the right tools or resources due to their various financial backgrounds . Similar to that, video editors face issues like not having the right tools or software to make the performance of their video meet their standards.

“I learn to overcome that through coming up with different ways to edit similarly on smaller editing applications,” Ventura said. “This had taught me to really think outside of the box to duplicate other concepts and really make it my own and create an own style for me.”

Although most art forms are only considered hobbies, high schoolers should be able to feel like they can choose art as a career. Taking a look at the HHS environment, the pressure to be the best at STEM-surrounding subjects is extremely high, because students have been trained to believe that’s the only career path that guarantees success.

“I feel like creativity is valued in the HHS environment…but maybe not as much as being in the highest math class or playing a bunch of sports,” freshman Chloe Ko said.

For artists, athletes and scholars, time is a valuable commodity, yet most of this time is used to prioritize school over everything else. When this happens too often, it detracts students from their hobbies, usually making them forget what makes them happy.

“The biggest [adversity as an artist] was probably that I didn’t have a lot of time on my hands to create something more than a small sketch,” Ko said.

As a high school community, we must do better to bring acceptance into people’s interests and allow them to grow to be their truest selves. Homestead’s renaissance begins now.