Author: EEBaum
Date: 2009-02-13 20:00
Our situations are more similar than you think... I loveD computer science. Once I really discovered music, I began to lose interest in it, to the point that I have little interest in it now, save for the occasional cool thing I can use it for in music.
What really doomed me in computer science was the slow pace. I left the workforce for two years to finish my undergrad, during which I was mostly in the music department. Every day was different there, always a new take on something, a different rehearsal, a different set of rep for the concert, a different group of people every year, all in the same place. Personalities would change over a matter of months, and someone was always playing something new and exciting. I then got a full-time job at the place I had interned at up until two years before. Everything was the same... same kind of projects, same technology, same people, same arrangement of desks in the office, same arguments about lunch. Great people and work environment, mind you, but just very little change. Even if I went to work for another company, I'm pretty sure it would be a variation on the same. It's been making me slowly crazy for the past couple years, and I'm looking forward to breaking back out.
After hearing a quarter-tone piano duet a friend wrote, there simply was no going back for me. No new Ruby framework, no C# release, no artificial intelligence techniques could ever get me as excited. And, for most of the people I work with, a quarter-tone piano duet could never get them as excited as a Linux server that requires zero configuration.
It can be deceptive in academia. I really liked computer science... for about 6 hours a week. 40 hours a week for months on end? Burned out and lost interest completely. Spending about 60 hours a week on music in academia, though, never had that effect (though the generous summer and winter breaks may have had something to do with that).
It's also a matter of doing something because you're good at it, or because you really like doing it. I sailed through the computer science curriculum, graduated top of my class, etc., but when I finished in lab an hour early, I would just leave lab. No further tinkering, no messing around, whatever. Contrarily, I was instantly put in my place in the music department as a music minor, not even knowing what a sonata was, let alone having played in an orchestra. But every single bit of it was so fascinating that I took every class, every elective, everything that most music majors found mundane or boring (they liked Musicianship 1 about as much as I liked Intro to Java). I came in not terribly good at it, and never dreamed of playing in the school's top ensembles, let alone writing music for international premieres.
So I stuck with it, not to prove something to someone else or to myself, not because I liked the challenge, not to make a career, not to establish a reputation (all things that most music majors want to do in music, and all things that I was setting out to do in computer science), but simply because I really really liked to do it, and was good *enough* at it that it looked like it could go somewhere. And that's why I continue to do it, and the career and reputation seem likely to follow.
I found a field that I'm enthralled enough about that it made my previous field seem inconsequential. That's what I'd encourage people to look for. If you can't find it, maybe you're already there. But do have a look.
-Alex
www.mostlydifferent.com
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