Posted by Kenneth A. Wolcott on May 05, 1999 at 14:37:41:
In Reply to: Music major doubts posted by Tito on May 02, 1999 at 21:35:26:
Hi;
I went into the US Army for three years directly out of high school because I didn't
know what I wanted to do. The first day of Basic Training showed me that I could have
chosen much better than the Army :-)
After my Army stint, I then went to University of Colorado at Boulder (I was born and
raised in Boulder) for a couple of years. My major (then) was Chemical Engineering.
Much later (six years of blood, sweat, tears and a much lower GPA!) I got a degree in
Math with lots of Computer Science.
There was a graduate student in my dorm (in Boulder) studying Chemical Engineering. He
was an oboe player from Chicago suburbs that was good enough to get into the Chicago
Youth Symphony but kept trying out for oboe positions in professional orchestras but
failing. He always seemed to lose at the final audition (always second place). He
decided that he was going to be a chemical engineer and live a very simple life so that
later, with all his savings, he could retire and afford to practice all day and get the
best instruction and then pass an audition at a professional orchestra.
To me that seemed so sad, to do something you really don't enjoy just to survive, so that
later (20+ years?) you can do what you really want to do.
I hope that all of you out there who are going to begin new careers have had the widest
possible experience in high school or college so that you have some knowledge of what you
want to do and what you like to do. Having lots of hobbies and outside interests while
in school helps you to decide what you want to do. It used to be that people had one
career for their whole lives. Now it seems hard to stay with one company more than five
years. If one is changing companies every two to five years, one might as well change
careers once or twice as well!
Hope this long-winded biography and best wishes was useful for somebody...
Ken