Last night I briefly chatted on facebook with one of my best and oldest friends (that I still consider a "best" friend). She's student teaching right now and is going through many of the same doubts that I did last year. She's having that "oh god is this really what I want to do with the rest of my life" challenge. Boy, can I relate. I got a degree in a dying (or severely depleted) career path, especially within public schools. Doesn't help that I have a passion for inner-city/impoverished schools where music education is even more lacking. Since graduation I had thought that my degree was pretty much useless to me in this current venture (nonprofit work in community development and transformational schools in poor neighborhoods). Recently, though, my perceptions towards the degree and the b.s. I had to go through to get it have changed.
In fact, I'm grateful I got a degree in music education. Granted I'm not specifically using the music skills (that's not entirely true... it helps to have a few songs in your back pocket to teach when you've got thirty kindergartners ready to go home but the bus won't be there for another half hour). But in terms of some wider understandings it was beneficial. I have a better perspective on funding in school systems and districts. I have a better understanding of assessment and accountability procedures in schools. I have skills and am working on skills in advocacy, practiced for a few years now as countless people have asked me, in response to my questionable career path, whether I want to be struggling to look for a job my entire life. I'm sorry, but that's not the point here. The point is that I got a degree in something I was passionate about at the time and it exposed me to a multitude of other options that include much of what I like most about music education: creating and working through beauty in multiple forms, exploring self-expression with students, advocating for the intangible benefits an enriched education can provide...I could go on. I wrote my thesis about this, for pete's sake.
In talking to Kel I was reminded that I don't have it all figured out either. The perfectionist planner inside me says 'holy crap this is a problem'. But really... it's not. Let me repeat: it's okay to not have everything figured out. Dear self, read this when you're stressed and wheezing about grad school and paying rent and all that other crap.
You need the world and the world needs you.
Rabbi Pinhas said: "When a man is singing and cannot lift his voice, and another comes and sings with him, another who can lift his voice, then the first will be able to lift his voice too. That is the secret of the bond between spirit and spirit."
