December 9, 2004
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Topic: ups and downs
Last night, i had a long talk with one of my best friends from college. He’s my age, but graduated a year behind me, and is now at Berkeley School of Music in Boston. Like myself, he had a less than desirable experience at Wash U., all he wanted to do was learn and play music, yet he was juggling a history major, and his music classes weren’t satisfying what he wanted to learn. He dropped the history major, but still was stuck doing homework for his music classes that weren’t necessarily giving him the skills he was looking for.
Now…he’s right where he wants to be, in a purely music focussed school. However, even now he’s beginning to question whether he’s in the best place, or whether it’s worth the high tuition. He’s in a band, but they can’t practice as much as he’d like because they’re doing homework for other classes. And…the classes he wants to take are part of a sequence that takes 3 more years to go through. All this and he’s ready to start living after 5 years in college. There’s bands he sees out there just doing it, recording, touring, figuring it all out. He knows that he’ll gain skill from staying in school, but, he realizes that making it as a musician requires more than skills. He feels like Bob Dylan, whose book he’s reading. Dylan lived in a small town, and it wasn’t until he got to New York that he was able to start making something of his passion and talent.
Everytime my friend and I talk, we complain a lot. We laugh a lot for sure, but we bitch about life. For me, that’s changed, at least last year when I was in South Africa. My friend is ready to stop bitching and start doing, and I may have convined him of that. I talked about education, and what I’ve learned about homeschooling, and suddenly my friend decided, “I’d be so much better homeschooling myself about music. Why pay a lot to not get what I need educationally, when I can do most of it myself, and freeing myself of the obligations to school will free me to practice, play with my band, and see what happens.” Now…he needs to convince his parents since they’re supporting him, we’ll see.
Oh…and I just got this inspiring e-mail from someone in my office. This woman who did Peace Corps in Turkey, lived there for 10+ years, married and had a kid there, recently went on vacation to Sri Lanka. We talked yesturday and I felt that bond to a fellow traveller that is just an amazing feeling.
Hi Dan,
I looked at your book last night and it made me understand how truly reluctant you are to go back to school for a masters or PhD. I look forward to talking about it with you after I’ve had a chance to read more of it. But first, let me congratulate you for writing and self publishing it. Oh, and I wanted to tell you that you’re the only other person I’ve met who has read Walking across Ireland with a Refrigerator (I’m not sure of the exact title). What a fun and crazy book that was.
Comments (3)
think we all question over and over until we smooth things out…
That is so cool that your friend has decided to take charge of his education and do it himself. More people need to know they have that choice, that it can be done, and it can be done well. As a society, most of us have so many obligations that we don’t need to have, that take us away from ourselves and where we’d really like to be. Keep us posted on how it goes for him.
Education is always a dissapointment when it doesn’t provide the exhilirating experience we want to end with – but it always provides an experience.