is this thing on?

good evening! this is going to be a long one i think haha. 

im very disoriented this week. i've nearly messed up my class schedule more than once and i've been fighting to get out of bed more and more each day. today, i showed up for classes that had been canceled for the holiday (my professor was being nice in doing this, we only officially have thursday and friday off, i had just forgotten somehow). i went to the library with my new free time intending to start on the many papers i have due in the next week, but i found myself typing up this post instead as it's been on my mind, and chipped at it bit by bit throughout the day. i don't know why i feel the need to make this post but hey, here we are. my higher education journey so far. 

i've known that i wanted to study music for a long time. it was middle school or so when i really conceptualized people who do music for a living who aren't like, pop stars or in bands or whatever. the second i figured out it was an option, i never really turned away from it. but i also don't think i ever really freely attempted to pursue it either which is quite strange. when you tell the adults in your life that you want to pursue music, they always try to instill the sense of realism in you that it's probably not be viable, that you should have other options. some did this, some did not. i think if anything, i'm the one who projected this most harshly onto myself. in my head i've always been prepared for a reality in which im not doing music for a living, so much so that i wasn't even taking the steps to make music a reality in the first place. i'd cut my losses before there was even anything to lose. i don't think i realized how strongly i was doing this and how hard it's hindered me until recently, however. 

i started in the UO school of music in 2021. i originally wanted to do the composition program, but things had gone very wrong in the first two years honestly. i nearly had to drop out in winter term of my first year for family issues, ended up staying but was commuting between eugene and corvallis with job and classes (granted, nothing i'm not used to but not fun either under the circumstances). i was out of practice on the clarinet and the imposter syndrome had already begun to slowly consume me. i hadn't auditioned for ensembles freshman year. in my mind i'd take the year off to get my chops back and audition the next year, but i had also already started to feel behind in the composition program by the end of spring term (the program is pretty strict and i had limitations on what classes i could take at the time and that started to mess things up, which was hard but not impossible to recover from, i think i overreacted tbh). i decided on moving to general music so i'd be less stressed and i'd graduate on time which was a larger priority to me then (funny, now). general music only required two years of ensemble, so i didn't audition sophomore year either. but truthfully, my dad passed very close to the beginning of fall term, im fairly certain i would have had to miss auditions for his funeral anyways. the rest of the year was filled with a strange kind of grief also, we lost my grandpa three months later and my grandma six months after that. i thought i was pushing through fairly well, but i can't remember much of that year so perhaps i was not. thus, junior year i had to get my shit together.

i felt a deep shame about joining campus band junior year, but i couldn't motivate myself to practice and i didn't believe that i would get into anything if i auditioned anyways (knowing what i know now i probably could have skirted by at a low chair but at the time i could not convince myself as such). but even in my shame of being in the predominantly non-music major ensemble for a year, i remember being very happy to be participating in music again. i'd been doing ensembles, usually 2 or 3 even 4 at a time since 6th grade, two years (three if you count botched senior year of high school) was a long time to go without. at that point i would have been mostly on track to finish in four years, but i'd have to take an extra year of just ensemble (campus band didn't count towards the degree since it is non-audition). i did finally pull myself together and auditioned my (not) senior year. and listen, i've been a musician for many years. i don't really get nervous in ensemble settings anymore, but i had never had an in-person solo audition up until that point. needless to say, it was pretty rocky. like i couldn't feel my hands or take a steady breath rocky. i pushed through but truthfully i went to my car and cried afterwards haha, i was devastated. thankfully though, i did in fact place in our wind symphony (our like middle tier ensemble essentially) as second chair, which was pretty good considering the circumstances. i think this is where i finally began my long, ongoing journey of healing my imposter syndrome. there's gratification in knowing you earned your spot, and i was so happy to be treated like a real musician again. not that this wasn't happening in campus band but you can only do so much when you're largely a group of people doing it for fun. i started to feel a little comfortable inviting my friends to my concerts, starting unpacking my complicated relationship with music. 

i didn't realize how deep in it i was until spring term. at that point i was set to do one more year of ensemble (and performance studio because i put that off too long as well lol) and then graduate. and then what? four years at UO and i had no real connections or friends on campus, no direction, created no foundation to work off of to actually do music beyond college, still didn't consider myself a good enough instrumentalist to do anything substantial on the clarinet either (still don't but we're working on it!!) i realized that i was going to graduate and it would actually be over. i was going to live the life that i had been preparing myself for this entire time: i studied music, but would have to do something else in the end. what pissed me off the most though is that i realized that i barely even tried!!! i love being a musician, i love making music and being involved in music, and yet i did absolutely nothing to actually try to be successful in a music career!!! this is a harsh way of putting it, obviously some of these years were a little strange but it was just very difficult to swallow that i self sabotaged so hard, i could only wonder what i could have achieved if i had actually just put my all into pursuing music instead of kind of passively going through the motions, not allowing myself to actually dream of anything on the other side. i became extremely depressed at the idea of my music journey coming to such a sad self-inflicted end. i couldn't let it end. 

for a long time i've suggested that music education was kind of my still-music-related-backup, but i've never felt particularly passionate about it (moreso working with children specifically, i acknowledge that is so so important to have people who can work well with children but this is not me unfortunately). this changed somewhere around last spring term as well. all of our GE conductors in wind symphony have been so so cool and i realized that i would love to be int their position. however as much as i wish i could wrap up undergrad this year and go straight to a masters in music ed, they ask for a lot more than i have reasonable means to provide (like tapes of leading rehearsals and things such as that) nor do i have the experience to compete for a GE spot. but we just so happen to have a very thorough undergrad music ed program that sets you up so well to do pretty much everything i'd need to move forward to a higher level (if done successfully). hence why in the last term of what should have been my second to last year i decided to change my degree once more to music ed. huzzah!

what does that mean for me? unfortunately it adds a minimum of 2 maybe 3 years just based on the way the program is laid out. but all of the courses are very fun and interesting (for example i have to take technique classes on every instrument group: this term it was high strings and flute/clarinet. im not very good at flute lol) and i'll actually get my foot in the door when i do student teaching in my last year. my goal is to do my time/get experience working in K-12 band programs (hopefully high school but whatever happens I'll be prepared lol) and then move forward to a masters in music ed and continue to work my way up to teaching at a college level. it'll only be feasible if i get a GE position since they'll pay most of my tuition (at least at UO) but im determined!! at the very least it is very nice to actually have some sort of plan and goal to work towards instead of some loose far off dream that i had already accepted the disappointment of not fulfilling. 

that's pretty much the gist of it, can't call it a tldr because that is quite the read haha. i've been sitting on this a while because i don't think i actually announced anywhere that i moved to music ed, because honestly (as this blurb implies) this whole process has been filled with shame. shame over my initial failures, shame that i almost settled on general music, and even the current shame that it'll now take like 7 years to finish undergrad even though i was very capable of doing this all in a timely manner if i just figured this out sooner. this shame isn't worth it though, i should be kinder to myself and i'm trying. i am very happy to have a path that im excited to pursue, despite the general fears over the state of education. 

so yes! if you made it here, hey :^) thanks for listening to my college rant, apologies if some of this is incoherent i really have been so so damn tired between work and union stuff (more on that later haha). i'll probably talk more freely about all the fun music ed stuff now. i'll also probably post more in general, just wasn't sure how i wanted to say this before moving forward. i've made it a much bigger deal in my head than it actually is, the post literally just could have been i figured out i wanted to do music ed and now i won't graduate for a while but it has been somewhat of a strange journey and figured perhaps i could take us all through it. anyways, i will not let this post get any longer haha, i must sleep and i have much to do tomorrow. see y'all soon <3