I have always been blessed with great teachers. I can say this going as far back as I can remember and as far forward as today. This, of course, is not limited to the standard grade school teachers and college professors. I would be remiss if I didn’t include my parents, friends, relatives, conductors, and advisors. The way I see things, if you can’t learn something from everyone around you, you’re doing it wrong. That’s not to say that everyone is a great teacher, but I can say that many people who have touched my life, several of whom I consider to be great and true friends, have been truly outstanding teachers and mentors.
You take all those great teachers, add the myriad of stuff I’ve learned from all those other people I’ve encountered, and pile on the ever growing list of things I’ve managed to teach myself despite my best efforts and what you are left with is quintessentially me. As me, I think that’s pretty cool. I firmly believe that I am, almost exclusively, a product of where I have been guided rather than where I have been pushed or forced or where, through some divine miracle, I was meant to be in the first place. Whether it was me or someone else who was doing the guiding is largely dependent on what specific piece of my life you are considering, but I certainly would not have any chance of guiding myself if not for those great teachers I keep mentioning.
Out of all this I have developed an incredible respect and love for mentors and teachers. I know now that I will not be satisfied for the rest of my life unless I can in some significant way return the favor bestowed on me by mentoring and teaching others myself. This did not become entirely clear to me until about three years ago, but I must have had some inkling of this, four full years before that, when I decided it would be a cool idea to start a pep band. I also had no clue that acting on that idea would irrevocably change everything.
There I was, a sophomore in college, majoring in optics, pretending that a double major in music was possible with an engineering workload, no conducting experience with any ensemble – just a little bit of basic instruction for field conducting marching bands, and I decide to start a pep band at a major, albeit relatively small, university. Luckily, I had a roommate who was at least as crazy as I was and just as motivated to start a band. After four months of organization and planning and a whole lot of really crazy luck, I was musical director of a pep band, and I had no clue whatsoever what I was doing. We played at some basketball games and it became clear that the band members didn’t particularly know what they were doing either. There were only 11 of us at the start and we were the picture perfect definition of a motley crew. We were very spirited, but as a band we left something to be desired. Nevertheless, it was a start.
Flash forward seven years. Some things haven’t changed. Pep band is still a motley crew for sure, and I still feel like I have no idea what I’m doing sometimes; but we are strong, organized, much larger, even more spirited, and we sound absolutely incredible when we are on top of our game. Beyond that, I’m an assistant conductor of the university wind symphony. I never did finish that pesky music degree, and I never took a formal conducting class or lesson, but I did manage a Bachelor of Science degree and am now plugging away at a PhD in optics. What else happened in those seven years? Suffice to say, a whole lot of good, a whole lot of bad, and a whole lot of learning.
Perhaps the most important thing I’ve learned is that if not for those great teachers I had before college, I would never have had the courage to start the pep band. If not for those mentors, teachers, and friends that came after, I would not have had the courage to keep going.
And for that I am eternally grateful.
No comments:
Post a Comment