My life as a college student has been hectic, to say the least.
Over the course of the past four years, I have changed my major exactly eight times, soon to be nine should I be accepted into a music department for the fall 2025 semester.
What caused this internal turmoil? What led me to waste an incredible amount of money and time only to end up back at the same place I started?
The easy way out would be to blame the pandemic, or to blame a difficult break up I was going through. In fact, those are the culprits that I have hidden behind any time anyone asked me why I was falling behind. I have learned, though, that it is not helpful to blame external factors for decisions that I made independent of them. Changing my major from music education to Spanish education isn’t something that was inspired by the pandemic. In fact, by the point that I made many of these decisions, the pandemic was largely a thing of the past. The inspiration for these actions came from within myself, and likely have roots in my childhood.
Regarding my decision to go back to music school, there is a bit of internal turmoil that I am currently experiencing. I currently hold a full-time job that pays well, and I have the opportunity to have a long and fruitful career in the future should I stay with IT. I am also slated to start a more serious stage in my current relationship by the end of this year, and my having a stable career would ease many people’s worries about my ability to help contribute to my future family unit.
All of that being said, something doesn’t feel right. At the risk of sounding overly dramatic, I feel as though my role in IT is relatively meaningless in comparison to the role I would have as a music educator. My inspirations to become a music teacher were to share my love of music with the next generation. I am fully aware that appreciation for the arts is quickly fading, and I wanted to be a part of the new guard in defense of arts education and expression. That inspiration, to me, feels existential. It is a goal and purpose that is much larger than me, and that feels important.
At the risk of sounding reductive, my current role involves sitting at a desk and fixing people’s computers. There is no grand purpose, there is no noble goal. I understand that there is more opportunity for financial gain, but if the only thing that I can say of my career at the end of my life is that I made a bunch of money, what did I do it all for?
For some people, money is enough of a motivator to go to work every day. There is absolutely nothing wrong with that, and I completely understand that frame of thinking, especially if someone does not have the resources to be able to pursue a career in education or the social services. However, I am lucky enough to have a certain access to resources that allows me to focus more on the impact I am able to leave rather than the amount of money that I can make.
Ultimately, my motivations for pursuing a music education degree all come back to my desire to make an impact with my career on my community. I understand that I can make an impact through volunteering, but I want to be working on this impact full-time.
Leave a Reply