When I look back on my childhood, I’m never able to pinpoint the exact moment I realized that I wanted to major in music in college with the hope of becoming a professional musician.
I was a typical kid--I wanted to be the best in my class. What I would eventually be the best at, didn’t really matter as much as the idea of being the best. I simply wanted to be very good at something. That was that.
I took to the French horn quickly and easily. I started lessons the summer before middle school band officially began. This head start, coupled with the fact I’d taken music lessons since the age of three, put me at a natural advantage. I beamed with pride during the first week of band, where I played a C major scale (two octaves).
I was a precocious kid. Soon after I began receiving a bit of special attention (for small things, think getting a smile for playing a melody correctly--not anything prodigious), I shaped my whole identity around music. On the first day of eighth grade, my math teacher asked us all what we wanted to be when we grew up. Without so much as a second thought, I gave the answer that would immediately cast me as the most unique kid in the class, the kid I wanted to be:
“I want to be a musician.”
I’d had this thought before. I probably vocalized it before. But, in that moment, seeing another person who didn’t know hardly anything about music smile at me and tell me how cool that was validated me. I wanted to be a musician because, compared to a bunch of other adolescents, being a musician made me cool and different.
It was a hell of a lot better idea than achieving that same end by dip-dying my hair and ripping up my skinny jeans, my parents must’ve figured.
It’s not that my pint-sized accomplishments were undeserved. I practiced my instrument every day; I participated in the talent show; I joined the marching band; I participated in smaller, regional competitions. By the time my junior year of college rolled around, I’d won some prize money, traveled across the country to play in conferences, and kept a long line of correspondences with many horn professors across the country. I sent thank-you notes and asked them if they’d be giving recitals soon. I told them how much I would love to be given the opportunity to study with them, one day.
That next September, I boarded the “audition train.” It’s not an actual vehicle; rather, it’s more of a course through several colleges. At each, I’d play a live audition and wait to hear if I’d been selected by their horn teachers. It was a stressful couple of weeks. I had six auditions in a little less than two months. I spent a lot of time worrying about where I’d be headed in the fall. I also worried about financial aid and Beethoven excerpts, solo pieces and rankings.
I was, to be completely honest, a mess.
However, being a nervous wreck for the better part of two months caused me to receive a lot of attention from my teachers and peers, which I enjoyed. My band director would ask me how each audition went, and I’d regale each note as if it were the most gripping story I’d ever told. My classmates would ask if I’d heard anything from the horn teachers, and, acceptance letter by acceptance letter, I’d tell them the good news. I wound up getting accepted to each school I’d auditioned for.
By May I’d quoted Beethoven in my high school yearbook, graduated, signed a bunch of scholarship and financial aid forms, and purchased my maize and blue t-shirt--I was University of Michigan bound. The night before I left for college, I double-checked all of my music. I was excited to take the solos I’d learned that summer. I was excited for my professor to hear and critique them.
I was just plain excited.
That excitement drained the second I walked into my first placement audition. Nervousness, lack of sleep, (and, to be honest, my first night drinking more than just a sip of liquor) caused my to completely bomb the audition. I cried in my dorm room after I’d retched all over “Symphonic Metamorphosis.” I was ranked in the bottom of the pack.
The rest of my freshman year didn’t get much better. I was completely out of my element. A fish out of water, if you will. I was a star in high school and I felt as if I’d been heavily demoted in college. My classmates were so impossibly talented, and it was becoming more and more obvious that I was not cut out for a musician’s life. While my classmates slaved over third species counterpoint, I was happy to just dance around my dorm room. While they dutifully studied their musicology lessons, I binge-watched “Breaking Bad” and wrote comedy shorts.
By the time I started my sophomore year, I was feeling pretty depressed. While my classmates regaled stories from the summer festivals they attended (flawless solos, meeting their mentors, generally excelling) I clung to odder memories: my summer festival in northern Michigan, where my favorite moments starred a guy named Andrew and driving around state parks in my Subaru. I just couldn’t relate to someone telling me about their cadenza as we sat around a campfire. I just wanted to drink my beer and be quiet.
It was October when I phoned my mom and told her I wanted to quit. I cried, I begged, I told her how miserable I was. Although she’d spent so much time and money shaping me into a University of Michigan-worthy musician, she understood. She supported me.