Seven 9s and 10s

High-res lefthandedtoons: Trumpet | Left-Handed Toons Comic URL: http://www.lefthandedtoons.com/936/ It’s hard to believe that it’s been 10 years since I was a trumpet major in college. After graduation, I immediately went from playing 6+ hours a day to playing 0 hours a day.  I’ve played maybe 10 hours total in the last 10 years. Music school will burn you out, kids. Don’t do it unless A) you really love your major instrument, or, B) have an instrument that you’re talented enough at playing to carry through your major (trumpet) but can then put away and focus on the instrument that you really love the most (guitar) after graduation.

lefthandedtoons:

Trumpet | Left-Handed Toons

Comic URL: http://www.lefthandedtoons.com/936/

It’s hard to believe that it’s been 10 years since I was a trumpet major in college.

After graduation, I immediately went from playing 6+ hours a day to playing 0 hours a day.  I’ve played maybe 10 hours total in the last 10 years.

Music school will burn you out, kids. Don’t do it unless A) you really love your major instrument, or, B) have an instrument that you’re talented enough at playing to carry through your major (trumpet) but can then put away and focus on the instrument that you really love the most (guitar) after graduation.

“Most of the stuff they study in school is completely useless. But some incredibly valuable things you don’t learn until you’re older – yet you could learn them when you’re younger. And you start to think, What would I do if I set a curriculum for a school? God, how exciting that could be! But you can’t do it today. You’d be crazy to work in a school today. You don’t get to do what you want. You don’t get to pick your books, your curriculum. You get to teach one narrow specialization. Who would ever want to do that?”

Steve Jobs discussing bureaucracy in US schools (via) (via austinkleon) (via infoneer-pulse) (via morrowplanet)

With this quote, Steve Jobs pretty much sums up exactly why I decided not to teach after graduating with a Bachelors in K-12 Music Education nearly ten years ago.  Standardization and testing is what currently rules American education and while that can be effective in certain subject areas, it has absolutely no place in arts education.

I wanted to teach kids how to make music and how to love music, not how to meet the standards set by people in D.C. that were completely disconnected from the actual process of teaching and learning.

Unfortunately I didn’t find out I didn’t like “teaching” until my student teaching semester, which didn’t occur until my senior year, and by that point it was far too late to change my mind or my major.