Posted by Matt G on November 25, 2001 at 10:34:00:
In Reply to: Please Indulge Me (***LONG***) posted by Dave on November 21, 2001 at 15:24:11:
As a guy who almost went ot the same school as Dave and has played with many of the names he has mentioned, I would like to say I commend him for having the courage to persue a better/more fulfilling career. I "hit the wall" before I ever really tried to become a "professional" musician. After I had graduated, the disillusionment left and I had to earn money while my newlywed wife went to grad school. I took a job that made $19k a year (in 1998) which was well below what I could have made as a music teacher. But even in those ranks I saw a "Union" type of attitude and although there were some excellent people in those ranks, I still felt like I did not want to join them. When I left college I probably had the chops (and probably still do) to get into a grad program, but why waste another 2-3 years practicing and playing to try to get a job that more than likely won't be there and instead of a $15,000 education to play as an amateur, a $50-60K education to possibly do the same?
So the job I took for $19K has now nearly doubled in salary in just three years as I have worked up through the ranks and my wife has graduated and is now pursuing her doctorate at an ivy-league school while she works full time for the DOD (yes I moved). We have a very comfortable living and are in a very comfortable situation. But am I content, NO! I am going to a community college to get prerequisite math and science courses done so that I can get a degree in mechanical engineering. Do I want to be an engineer, Yes. Did I know this when I was in college, No. Am I positive that I want to be an engineer, about 98%. I know that what I am doing now is/was to create a comfort zone for myself and my wife, but I am growing weary of my occupation, so I am gearing up for a new path in life. Before I started classes, I thought I would be the only loser who is slowly going bald and looks much closer to thirty than twenty. However, on the first day I was suprised to see that approxamately 1/2 of the class was kinda in my shoes. Some of the folks had at least ten years on me.
What all of this reminds me of is the Monster.com commercial tha aired earlier in the year. Basically it was a guy in a coffin the had a grin from ear to ear that the mortician could not get rid of. This commercial carried a very strong message for me: Die Happy. Why waste XX years of our life toiling to make a living. Try to do something you want to do to pay the bills. You might not be able to accomplish this immediately, but keep it as a goal. I still love to play the tuba, but I, like many other amatuers on this BBS, do not have them time, nor the desire to put into that profession. So, basically that isn't for us.
Good Luck in your endeavors,
Matt G
p.s. Someone should start a thread about the gross injustices that the average music department does to there students as compared to the average business/pshycology/engineering/etc. degree.