What I Did With a Useless Degree

How a so-called "useless" degree can turn out to be invaluable

Join Emily Brunner as she talks about all of the things she learned as a music performance major in college.

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23 years ago, the conversation always started something like, so now that you're a senior, what are your plans for college? And it usually ended with, you're majoring in what? What do you plan to do with that degree? I say the conversation ended because as a 17 year old, I didn't know how to answer them. I felt like their question to me was quite rude and insensitive. But I , didn't know what the answer was. I didn't know what they wanted me to say and I didn't quite honestly know what my future was going to hold. Well now I have the answer. I'm Emily and this is Philly Dances. I have a degree in music performance. To be more specific, I spent five years, yes, five - I transferred schools halfway through studying clarinet performance. So I know that's, that's a really, really specific skill set that I share with a very small and lovely portion of the population. Um , and to be fair, most of my clarinet playing abilities have withered a lot over the past 18 years. So while I can no longer perform Debussy's Clarinet Concerto very well. I am so, so, so very thankful for everything that I learned during my time at both Indiana University's School of Music and also the DePaul University School of Music. After I graduated, with all of the different jobs that I've had over the years, I truly honestly attribute my success and satisfaction that I had during those jobs with the skills that I learned as a music major. I believe whole heartedly that my music degree prepared me better for the real world and for those jobs than some of my colleagues' business degrees did. Okay . So what did I actually do with my so called worthless degree? I learned how to take constructive criticism from others and how not to take it personally. Every week the clarinet studio would hold a master class where a few students would , um , essentially have like a private lesson up in front of all of our peers. The purpose of the class was to get better, which meant that the teacher had to point out in front of everyone what we could do better. This was actually a really great thing because they were telling us how to adjust our embouchure or have a more delicately tapered decrescendo . They weren't criticizing our character or our hairstyle or our taste in movies. It's actually a good thing when someone offers you respectful correction. It's not a devastating statement on who you are as a person and I really, really learned that during my time in music. I also learned how to objectively critique myself and how to use that to build confidence. As a musician, we spend hours and hours and hours alone in a practice room. We practice and we have to analyze our own playing. There's nobody else there to tell us whether we're doing a good job or not. So it's really important that we are being honest with ourselves and when we see something that needs improvement, that we strive for it and then we can feel good about ourselves as we achieve it. It's important to be able to do that for ourselves because sometimes there's nobody there to guide us along or help us knowing that we can trust ourselves because our own objective self-criticism has helped us. It's so, so valuable. I learned how to stay on task and manage my own time and those practice rooms , when you're practicing alone by yourself for several hours a day, there's a lot of opportunity to get distracted or cheat. It's really up to us to set our own schedule and hold ourselves accountable to that time management skills are so, so very useful everyday , everywhere and I'm very thankful that I learned those with my clarinet performance degree. I learned how to methodically tackle a problem. You know, practicing a difficult passage. How do you do that? How do you learn something? When you start, it can seem overwhelming. You learn to take it one step at a time, practice it one phrase at a time, one rhythm at a time, or even one note at a time. Start slowly. Work up faster and faster until you get to the tempo that you need. Working gradually towards a goal is a great strategy and it applies everywhere. I learned how important it is to listen. In order to play something well, you have to really listen to it. You have to know how it's supposed to sound before you can actually play it. So as you're practicing, you're listening, you're listening to yourself to find the places where it needs work. It's really the same way in life. How many problems in life would never have even existed if everybody around us was just better at listening. Being observant before we take action is a big key to making wise decisions in life. I learned how to work with others. Aside from all the time practicing alone in a practice room, most of the rest of being a musician is full of collaboration. Whether you're playing in chamber music groups or you're in orchestra or band rehearsals, we're working together, taking critiques from the people around us, from our conductors, listening to what our peers are doing so that we can fit in and create something together. No one is succeeding in life without working with other people and sometimes it takes patience and understanding just the same way as in the orchestra. But learning how to work with people truly, truly with them is a great skill for anywhere you go. Anything you want to do. Almost everything I've said so far applies to the behind the scenes part of being a musician. As you know, The performance is a really small part of it all compared to all of the time preparing and learning. But one lesson in particular came from my very favorite part of music school, which were the auditions and performances. Yes, the auditions and performances were scary and I definitely felt nervous and worried. No matter how well prepared you are, you know the moment before you play that first note that you could have prepared more. It's always always true, but taking that figurative leap, taking a breath after that thought and just starting, it's such a liberating thing. Without that scary first step, you're , you'll never get to be where you are. Never. You have to do the scary stuff. So I learned that the only way to truly, truly follow your dreams is to do the scary stuff. My last lesson for music school came well after the day where I quit. After I had been in music school for five years, I realized that I didn't really love playing the clarinet enough to make it my career. I had spent hours and days and years working so hard to become a really, really good clarinet player, but my heart wasn't in it. I was reluctant to admit that at the time I felt like if I quit all of that time that I'd spent in college and also in high school it would have been wasted, but I chose to take confidence and knowing that I didn't want to be a clarinet player anymore. I made that decision and I really never looked back until recently. I was thinking about it just a few years ago and I realized that I have zero regrets about quitting and even though I no longer play clarinet, I felt with the retrospective , looking back after all these years that my time with the clarinet was really, really valuable. Even though I'm no longer playing, I learned how to be confident in deciding to leave something in the past and pursue new opportunities. So, if I knew then what I know now, my answer to the question, "what do you plan to do with that degree?" Would have been: I plan to become a productive and collaborative and observant and confident person who can help people and be a part of beautiful things in the community around me. Teachers never, ever underestimate the value that you are providing to your students, your inspiration and influence . It goes far beyond the how tos and all that technical precision. Parents never be afraid that your child is making a bad decision by pursuing something they truly love. If they're dedicated and passionate about what they're doing, then they're going to learn more than you could ever have hoped. Dancers, never be afraid to listen to your own voice. Even when it goes against what some other people are saying, unless those people are experts in what you're doing and have danced in your shoes, they don't understand as well as you do. No matter where you end up, you have a great future ahead of you. Full of fun and success and lessons learned.