I hate buying textbooks.

From my perspective, life is a long journey of gathering, receiving, and processing knowledge. We spend our whole life learning and putting together everything we know, to in turn pass it on to the next generation. So when does the bulk of our learning occur? Is it in the classroom? Maybe for some, but i think that living life and interacting with people of our own age, those younger than us, as well as those older than us have the largest impact upon how we learn about ourselves, and about living the game of life.

One of the first things i learned, is that in the music world, more often than not people suck. Yeah you heard me right. Not everyone is going to voluntarily take you under their wing, and show you the ropes, or show you how to be a better musician. The way the job market is today, and even just the way the world is today, everything is so competitive that we can sometimes forget that were all in this together. I have had the pleasure of working with many fellow students, as well as high school teachers, instructors, and professors who have mentored me into what i am today.  Although this is true, i've also had more than a handful of people who quite frankly have wanted to see me fail, and that has almost molded me into what i am today. My freshman year in college during a rehearsal of a piece for a chamber music concert, an upper classman came in and literally said the words, "This is too hard for you, you guys shouldn't be playing this." Whether or not this statement was accurate is beside the point. (Although it was not ;) This just goes to show you a caliber of person that is less ideal.

So how do we deal with this in real life? What do you do when someone, wether it be a professor, fellow student, or any other peer does this? You LEARN. As a future educator i find myself constantly looking at others, and comparing and contrasting myself to them. By doing this, i'm not trying to bad mouth anyone, or think i am better than anyone, i'm just trying to figure out what i think is the best possible thing for my students. The same way we admire people in a positive manner, we can do for the opposite reason. In fact there are a lot of people i admire because they've shown me many ways i do not want to teach, or practice. Although my experience with this that i am sharing is solely musical, this applies to everything we do in life. Strive to be not only the best musician you can be, but also the best person you can be.

Learn from everything.
Make every experience positive no matter how it effects you.
Strive to be the Best you can be.


Peace & Love,

MB