Keepers

Keepers The C4 standard

New Topic | Go to Top | Go to Topic | Search | Help/Rules | Smileys/Notes | Log In

Re: College--Auditions, double majors, etc.

Author: EEBaum
Date: 2009-01-15 19:16

For what it's worth, when I started college, I was passionate about computer science, and just "really liked" music. "Playing in band" music. I had never seen a piece of solo repertoire ("30 best solos" books don't count), don't think I'd been to a professional-level classical concert, wouldn't have been able to tell a concerto from a sonata, never played in an orchestra, didn't know Mozart from Wagner. In retrospect, while I thought I played all right, my clarinetting was absolutely atrocious at the time. I hadn't written a note on paper when I started, and composition had never crossed my mind as an option.

Two years after graduation, I'm performed internationally, up to my ears in commission requests, starting ensembles, making plans to open a concert hall. With my starting-college plans, I thought I'd be a senior programmer at Blizzard right now.

Stuff changes, and you're likely to find yourself doing something different in college than what you started out in, or at least doing a different angle on it than you expected... but only if you're open to it and watching for it.

On the other hand, I've known countless bright people (high school valedictorians and the like) who just went straight through with their original plan, graduated from big-name colleges, then found themselves not actually liking what they got their degrees in. Having never looked around at other options until graduation, some end up starting from scratch after that, or heavily modifying their plans. (a really sharp biochem graduate I know is now a delightfully happy accountant)

I'd suggest to look at the things you're really good at, and try to figure out if you actually *like* doing them, and like doing them *a lot*. There's always time to change your mind, but the later you do it, the harder (or, at least, the more of a shock) it might be. I discovered after graduation that, while I'm good at CS, I only really like doing it about 10 hours a week. That's how much I did in college, and it worked out great there, but after I graduated I burned out really fast with 40 hours/week. I'd been spending 30, 40, 50, 60 hours per week around musicians, though, and had no problem with that, hence the grad school apps.