Hopeful Beginnings

Today was the first day of school. My last first day of public school. I knew I was only going to have five classes but I had no idea how awesome that was actually going to be. I'm off 6th and 7th period. 6th period is Music Theory, so I can sit in for a lesson and get refreshed on stuff I already learned last year. Once homework starts, I'm mostly going to use my off time to get it out of the way so I have time to practice my various region music at home.

Today during 6th period I mostly hung out with Mr. Moore, and of course I wanted to talk about college. I talked about this yesterday, and said that I didn't want a music degree in education because I wanted "to PLAY dammit!". After getting the Performance Degree Speech* again from Mr. Moore, I realized some new facts. With an education degree, you don't necessarily have to be a band director, you could just be an elementary school music teacher. Of course I would probably end up teaching the kids music theory anyway, but this really made me rethink my view on which degree I want.

If I got a small teaching job, I could still have time to play my horn (or guitar) and "get that big gig", as Mr. Moore put it.

Mr. Moore explained to me that you can work towards a music education degree and still get the education that you get when you work towards a performance degree. He said all you have to do is sign up for more ensambles than are required of you and you basically do the same stuff that the performance degree people do. So you get as good as someone with a performance degree, but you have a better chance of getting a job. The only downside is, that job is teaching kids.

BUT like I said, and what Mr. Moore said, you can just get a little rinky-dink teaching job and still have time to play. Elementary school music teachers have a lot more spare time than other teachers--they don't have to grade papers! Mr. Moore also said something about how some junior highs are so small that they only have band like once or twice a week. Thats a crapload of spare time to do all kinds of stuff with your music.

Planning my musical future just got a lot less vague.

*The Performance Degree Speech:
"I could take a simple piece of toilet paper and write '(so and so) has a Performance Degree' on it, and you could get just as many jobs with that as you could with a real performance degree."
-Zeb Moore