Incoming Lufkin High School students should join alternative activities within their first two years of high school if they are not playing any sports. Getting required courses out of the way can make students’ high school years better. Students who take their required courses early can earn their credits but also see if art could lead to a career.

Art is a great subject and can help you in many ways. Art is a great elective that can help students relieve stress and enable them to speak without actually talking.

Art is known as a form of creative human expression. Creating art stimulates communications between various parts of the brain. Drawing — one of the many types of art — can help students create a more cohesive memory and help them to process visual information. Transforming written text into an art form helps organize students’ knowledge. Drawing can also improve teenagers’ hand/eye coordination. Many people see art pieces and just see the picture, but the picture can actually have multiple meanings.

Students who pursue an art career can get one of many scholarships, and the art experience looks good on resumes and letters of recommendation.

Painting, sculpture, music, literature and the other arts are often considered to be the repository of a society’s collective memory. Art preserves what fact-based historical records cannot. Art also has a influence on society itself. There is a positive correlation between high school students’ involvement with drama or music activity and their grades in math and literacy.

Incoming LHS freshmen should talk to their counselors about getting into more art classes early in their high school career.