- One thing that we regularly hear as university personnel
is well, how do I make this decision?
What do I do now?
I have the chance to go and teach
in Albuquerque and I could make enough money to live.
And maybe that's what I want to do.
Or then I could go to grad school
or maybe I should play for New World.
And the answer would be,
why are you limiting yourself to one thing?
Why don't you take the thing that you have
and see how it works?
And if it doesn't work do something else.
I have in mind, a particular graduate of Rice
who actually has done everything that I just said.
He started out teaching and working in the,
probably the foremost base shop in North America
in Robertsons and Albuquerque.
And he worked there in the shop
and taught bass and did some playing on the side.
Then the next thing,
opportunity that came upfront for him was
as a librarian and as a performer in Sarasota,
in the West Coast, Florida West Coast Symphony
and he called and he said, well, what should I do?
I could do that.
Or I could just practice and get another playing job.
And I said, well, does it interest you to go to Florida?
Yeah, I liked the idea.
I can do the library thing.
So he went and did that.
Then with the great surprise,
he got a call to see if he was interested
in being the librarian with the Detroit Symphony
which is a whole nother situation
because that pays scale, orchestra scale.
So we're talking, he's moving to an $80,000 job.
Well, of course he had to go get it.
And it was interesting for him because he went up there
and they actually had an exam for the position.
And it wasn't about taking his bass out and playing it.
It was about knowing how to find unusual repertoire
how many flutes are there in such and such a piece?
Is there an English horn in such and such a piece?
And he took this exam.
There were four people that were in the finals for it.
And he felt badly because he was through
with it in an hour and 15 minutes.
And the other people were in there for almost three hours
and he thought, well, he must have done something wrong.
In fact, he did something, right.
He got himself a good education
and he was able to answer all the questions
because they were all in his head already.
He didn't even have to look anything up.
And if he didn't have the answer
he knew where the answer was.
And he referenced the material.
Obviously he won the position
and they said, they'd never seen anybody.
Even the person that put the exam together,
couldn't believe that anybody
could do that exam in an hour and 15 minutes.
And he's quite happy being the librarian
of the Detroit Symphony.
And he has a lot of playing opportunities
in the summertime and during the year.
And he's actually subs with the Detroit Symphony
from time to time also.
So when you look at what the opportunities are,
that would be the exciting part.
And try not to limit yourself to making a decision.
The old story about
do I want chocolate or vanilla comes to mind?
I don't know, what do you want chocolate or vanilla.
Yeah, but I have to decide.
Don't decide, make a choice.
Go for one or the other.
If you like chocolate today
you might have vanilla tomorrow.
Everything is out there.
At your age and at your place in life,
don't limit yourself to going down one road.
Write your goals in pencil
so that you can erase them when you don't like what you got.
Because you might just get what you got, what you wanted
and then decide you would like something else.
That's fine, that's normal.
I think the number of opportunities
that are available to you,
particularly in today's culture are without limit.
They're only limited by your imagination.
So go for that thing that makes you excited.