On March twelfth when Mississippi State released its statement declaring that we will have another week of Spring Break and there was a possibility of online learning, I was ecstatic. I was tired of getting up at seven-thirty every morning and walking to my eight A.M. I was tired of going to sleep at 1 or 2 every night after doing homework and studying, I was so relieved to finally have a break where I could just relax and work on other hobbies that had been overshadowed by my studies. I had no idea that distanced learning was going to be this tough mentally and emotionally. If I could, I would've chosen to go back to school.
I am finishing my freshman year at Mississippi State where I am earning my Bachelor's degree in Instrumental Music Education. Our entire curriculum is built off of interaction with your peers and the most important thing is performances and live tests. In one of my classes, I am tested on my singing abilities in front of my teacher which has been a challenge throughout the pandemic. Your final as a music major is based on a performance in front of multiple professors and they grade you on how you have grown as a musician and as a performer throughout the semester. I miss seeing my professors and talking about music with them and even just talking about how their weekend was. More importantly, I miss my peers and my friends.
My best friend in the music department is a bassoon player that I met through All-State and I miss him dearly. We would sit next to each other in all of the classes we had together and just joke and struggle to get through ear training. I hate seeing my friends and mentors through a computer screen with delays and poor internet connections, I know after this is over and we step back on campus in the fall that I'm going to take every opportunity to talk to my professors and friends face to face and not just cower behind an email because I'm intimidated to speak with them.
When I first came home from college for Spring Break, I did not have internet but I didn't see how that would become such an immense problem soon. I did a lot of reflecting when I didn't have internet and I was begging my professors to cut me some slack and work with me as I didn't know when this problem would be fixed. What we as musicians do requires so much human interaction that I didn't realize it until I didn't have the luxury of it. When you go to a concert, whether you are the performer or the audience, you can't have one without the other. Just like two musicians improvising off of the other and bouncing their energy and ideas off of the other, the same goes with any performance. A professor of mine sent her students an email about how she missed making music with her students and this statement she said has really stuck with me and to quote her, "perhaps we should view this silence just as we do silence in music. When we have a pause in music, it makes the return to the sounds of the musical line that much more enjoyable and fulfilling."
