Author: kdk ★2017
Date: 2019-08-01 22:26
Have you posted about this before? It sounds like a familiar situation, though maybe a year and one more missed All-State later.
PutnamFellow161 wrote:
> In all four years of high school, I fully expected myself to
> make All-State for at least one time, but it didn't happen. On
> the contrary, I embarrassed myself in front of my entire high
> school and I'm still not over it despite me having graduated
> from high school in 2018.
There really shouldn't be an issue of embarrassment for not having made All-State. *Most* high school players don't make it into All-State. That you weren't one of the very few shouldn't embarrass you. Unless your high school is a very small one with a very close-knit student body, most of the kids in your school don't know you didn't make it in or even that you auditioned.
> There were kids who mocked me who did
> make All-State, and I feel that the war is not over yet as I
> intend to participate in some international competition to have
> my sweet revenge on them.
>
There are a couple of things wrong here. First, if someone is "mocking" you, it's their character flaw, not yours, that is the problem. That you look at it as a "war" suggests that there is a mutually, or reciprocally antagonistic attitude involved that's aggravating the situation from your point of view. You can't control the other kids' attitudes or their behavior. You can only control yours. If they're behaving badly, you have the choice to avoid them unless you've ended up in the same college after graduation. You will, or should, never need have anything to do with them again.
> However, I feel ridiculously behind them since I never made the
> All-State band, and now I have to start over from scratch.
Now to your state of affairs. You aren't "ridiculously behind them" *because* you didn't make All-State. If you *are* behind them in musical or technical development (and I have no way to know one way or the other), that's why you didn't make All-State and they did. You have the cart before the horse, as the cliche goes.
> Will I ever catch up and beat those All-State kids
You will catch up if your basic talent level is equal to theirs and your dedication to furthering your development is sincere and conscientious. You will get better if you study, practice and learn from your mistakes. (That last one is where many of us fell down as young students - we neither recognized many of our mistakes nor really learned much from them, which requires accepting them as being mistakes at all.) This is a part of your behavior you control directly. The level you eventually reach has nothing to do with how anyone else plays. It has only to do with what energy you put into the process going forward.
> or will I
> have to give up the clarinet and focus on my astrophysics major
> in college? I already bought the R13 this year, and I'm
> sounding so much better than I did on the Ridenour 576.
>
Whether or not you give up the clarinet isn't dependent on "catching up" to anyone, and lots of musicians who perform at a high level also have day jobs that pay the mortgage and food bills, jobs for which they trained while they kept studying to play their instruments. You must have chosen astrophysics for a reason - hopefully, it's a field you enjoy. If so, it shouldn't be something you "have to do" instead of continuing to play the clarinet. You should have been accepted into the program, too, for a reason - you were assessed as bright and talented enough to have a good shot at success as an astrophysicist. You can certainly focus on your major and still progress and improve in music and clarinet.
What you should do is sit down with someone in whose judgment you trust and talk all of this over with him or her. Sit and talk more than once. Talk about and focus on what you want to get out of life and what success in *life* generally seems to look like from your present point of view. Stop living in your past, stop comparing yourself to people you probably aren't ever going to see again, and start living your own present and future.
Karl
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