Music majors are some of the most interesting people you will ever encounter. If you encounter them. Most of the time, music majors are hiding away in practice rooms, consuming caffeine, or sleeping. And sometimes, the sleeping part never actually happens.
Between music theory classes, applied lessons, performance classes, and classes geared toward that particular music major's concentration (production, education, therapy, ethnomusicology, etc.), we spend our time struggling through the week with each other. And we love every minute of it.
Here's a glimpse at some of the struggles music majors go through. Enjoy!
1. 7:50 AM MUSIC THEORY This is literally the bane of my existence. I'm probably not the only music major out there in the world that strongly dislikes music theory, and cringes at the thought of it.
2. Applied Lessons I honestly love applied lessons, however, they're that one class that always seems to be forgotten about until the day of. For those of you who don't know, applied lessons are just private lessons.
3. There's never enough caffeine. Or in the case at ORU, the pop machine just spits out scolding hot drinks. Music majors seem to thrive off of caffeine. Something's gotta keep us awake so we can practice until all hours of the night before doing hours of homework. I don't function unless I've had my coffee, and I know I'm not the only one who is the same way.
4. JURIES This is just a scary, scary word. I'm almost positive that if you ask a music major what juries are, you'll see them shed tears. In a nutshell, juries are finals week for applied lessons. You work all semester on pieces of music that you have to play in front of your professors, and you're graded off that one performance. No matter how bad the performance is.
5. Recitals I'm starting the process of working on my junior recital. I'm currently preparing about six pieces of music to perform in the spring in front of my peers. This thought is nerve-wracking. I'm a Music Education major for a reason. And that reason is because I do not like performing. Thankfully I won't be doing my recital alone.
6. Class times always conflict with other classes. This results in having to pick and choose between what classes to take each semester. Granted we do that anyway, but this is a whole new level of difficulty. It's even worse when those classes are only offered every two years or so.
7. We're not always allowed to just sleep in the music building. I'm not sure how it is at other universities, but at ORU, most of our buildings close at 11:30 at night. Once the building closes, no one can be inside. I've said more than once that if I could, I would bring a mattress to our music building and just sleep there. So I just settle for taking naps in there during the day.
If you ever want to know more about being a music major, just go to your school's music building and ask someone. We are very friendly people. We just don't get to socialize as often as we want.
Oh, and we're probably the funniest and coolest people you've ever met.
