Should I drop out of music school?

[oystersauce]

Hey guys,

I'm in my 2nd month of my 2nd year of the music program at my university. The past two months have been hell. I want to audition for the performance program but I'm not that great and I have very bad anxiety playing for people. My self-esteem is in wrecks and I'm crying every other day. The schoolwork is tough. I'm horrible at theory and academics even though I excelled in it in high school. It's gotten to the point where I contemplate suicide on a regular basis, and it scares the crap out of me.

My dream is to someday start a music school. I have my grade 10 RCM, and I've been thinking that maybe instead of staying in school I should just get my ARCT and start teaching. I suppose I could do that while I'm in school but what's the point in getting a Bachelor's in Music History? At the same time, maybe I shouldn't drop out because I've already wasted all this money on tuition and housing.

Based on what limited information I've given, please help me think this through. I'm seriously in crisis mode right now and I don't know where to turn.

[hfmadopter]

The fact you are talking about this, even though it's on line, is a good thing. You shouldn't keep all this emotion pent up inside of you. If you can talk with people, answers will come. Meanwhile none of it, not even the tuition, is worth considering suicide. Keep that in mind and the fact it scares you is healthy, it should scare you. It could be that you need some guidance to help you through this or maybe even change it up a bit. Even if you stick it out there is light at the end of the tunnel, You don't go to school for a lifetime !

I think you need somebody to help you make some choices.

[outin]

Get some councelling, both for your career plans and your mental state. Nobody can really tell you what you should do with your future or anticipate how it will turn out, but talking to someone will help you clear your own thoughts. And although it probably won't help much, you are in a point of your life when a lot of people get lost and anxious. You are not alone. Whatever you decide to do, if you don't do something really drastic, things will turn out better. There is no one right way to live your life, you can find piece and happiness in very different ways.

[theholygideons]

to die without knowing what your full potential is?
that is very pitiful...

[faulty_damper]

So, you suck at the piano. How did you even get accepted, then?  That does not compute.  All your bases are belongs to us.  You can't be the worst pianist at the school, either.  Also, I don't think you have any real friends.  Why do I say this?  Because you think of suicide.  People with real friends don't think of suicide.  So my advice to you is to make a friend.  One real friend. Not the fake kinds.  The real one.  Just one.  You only need one.  Good luck!

[hfmadopter]

to die without knowing what your full potential is?
that is very pitiful...

From time to time in ones lifetime emotions well up from within. Sometimes we don't know why or how severe it will get but it is human nature for it to occur. The OP needs to know that . I Repeat, The OP Needs To Know That.

 Just about the last thing the OP needs to hear quite frankly is this is pitiful and with any luck more than likely went in one ear and out the other. Talking and acting on a few well sorted thoughts will most likely bring the op out of this.  All the pent up negative energy has gotten the best of him/her at the moment. The OP needs to see options and act on some of them. They may not even be as drastic as he/she thinks they need to be but they need to be their own choice. Mulling around inside right now with all that negative stuff is also the positive answer or answers, it needs to be dug up. It is not pitiful to need to find a course of action and have someone who can help you to choose your own course of action. It happens that way sometimes, that's all. When there are thoughts of suicide the time has more than come to act on the situation. It doesn't make the person or situation pitiful, it's a pertinent cue to take action in a positive way.

[theholygideons]

...Just about the last thing the OP needs to hear quite frankly is this is pitiful and with any luck more than likely went in one ear and out the other...

The reason why I refer to not 'realising one's full potential' is that if the OP were truly dedicated to self-improvement and the continuous peeling of one's own insecurities, then he would not be stuck within this stagnant and suicidal mindset, but be preoccupied with further actualizing his goals. He has already proclaimed that he should 'someday start a music school'. Therefore, instead of this compulsive thinking about the past and future and conceptualizing of his life, the OP should take action by studying efficiently, asking lecturers, tutors and friends for further assistance, and the logistics of running a music school. Also, it is up to him to see whether there is value in his present academic tuition or state of mind and how they may aid in fulfilling his objectives.

[outin]

to die without knowing what your full potential is?
that is very pitiful...

We all die without knowing that, it's how life is. Very few of us will ever get even nearly as far as we could have IF everything in life went perfectly. Because life is just full of unexpected things. Obviously it will require quite a bit of living to understand that. The perspectives are often quite narrow with the very young.

[nanabush]

I was in the same boat!!!  Upon getting accepted, I felt like I was the worst pianist in my level, and that the rep I was given was absurd.

It's just a high stress degree!  I'm sure if you speak to any other students, they'll probably have a similar kind of stress as you.

For my school, in third year, we had to do a 50 minute recital, and the next month we had to have a Concerto and 3 etudes prepared (none of which could be on the recital)...I remember wanting to curl up in a ball and die learning a Ligeti etude.  You get through it though; there are tons of deadlines (having sections learned, memorizing pieces, working on phrasing/voicing), but lucky for you it's in a VERY creative domain.  I started realizing this when I was practicing late into the night!  You need to find a way to have fun while learning your rep.  Don't compare yourself to other people - that's a poisonous mindset.  There was a girl at my University in my year who was EXTREMELY good.  She had nerves of steel, took on some monster rep, and played like a powerhouse lol.  I remember her always coming up to me and being like "how are you always so calm?!  I'm practicing 6 hours a day!!! I study my scores on the bus!  How do you do it?"... the whole time, I thought I had been the one freaking out, but no one even noticed... just like I hadn't even noticed that she had some underlying stress as well.

It's completely normal to be stressed out about school - and in a music degree, knowing what lies ahead -; I'd suggest just being open about it with either friends, your teacher, or any other counsellors the school offers.

You'll get through it!  Don't let some silly notes on a piece of paper get the best of you  put the time in - you have a HUGE advantage in theory... you can play everything written out on the piano.  A lot of instruments do not have that luxury, and are even worse off with theory than pianists.  Do you exercises near a piano, internalize them, 'know' what they sound like.  Being able to work on 'hearing' the harmonies/melodies you write out is a huge bonus, but takes practice! 

I just graduated in April, and the stress from 1st/2nd year is still fresh in my mind haha!

[asiantraveller101]

Please make an appointment to see the university counselor and/or psychologist. They are more equipped to help you. They deal with cases like yours often. I am sorry to hear that you are contemplating suicide, please DON'T! Life may be tough now and you feel like you are caught in a rut and endless desperation, but I need you to look at a bigger picture. You admit that you are not great at performance. So, you can and need to consider other options. There are still music education, history, or theory options available for you. Believe it or not, it is easier to find college jobs with those majors, than piano performance.
To tell you a story: my theory professor in my undergrad, switched her major from piano performance to theory, after she heard someone practicing the same Chopin etude Op. 10, No. 2 next door to her practice room. She was struggling so hard with it, and the person next door just zipped through easily. She realized she was not cut out to be a performer. She turned out to be the best theory teachers I have had.
Another story: in my grad entrance exam, the theory prof who was administering the exam kept fumbling through the listening dictation. He just couldn't play a simple 2-part excerpt, and he played like over 20 times. Of course, we all got the 2-part dictation since it was repeated so many times. I suspect perhaps he wasn't a piano player to begin with?
So, the reasons I am telling you these, is that there are other options for you as a pianist.
All the best to you.

[indianajo]

don't take this so seriously.  Lots of students change major in the second or third year.  there are only 16 study hours in a day, and if you go over that you stop sleeping, which ruins your build up of memory.  I know, I **** near flunked out of school by taking courses at the standard rate and making a lot of bad grades in my third and fourth year.  I had no option on the number of hours I took, my draft number said Viet Nam as a 11Bravo (foot soldier. rifleman) or finish college and earn a commission in four years.   So . . . I changed schools. I found some teachers at the third level state school who could explain physics in words, instead of writing more **** equations on the blackboard.  Yeah, I finally did the equation solutions, no I couldn't do them just by looking at squiggly greek letters.  So I'm not Stephen Hawking, all right? I graduated, several guys in my classs with the same problem dropped out and became electronic technicians and salesmen and things.  I met a couple of the dropouts later at a TI IC seminar.   There were 15 guys all making A's, four of us making D-'s, and the teachers didn't have a clue why.  Seeing the teachers individually didn't help, they just said "but it is obvious that .... " over again. 
And don't worry about the tuition money in your second year.  I was paying my own way, burned 5 years of sweaty summers in industry and trucking, paying tuition and car expense, (Dad packed lunches for me and I ate & slept at home)  and had to blow off a whole college year changing schools and repeat four courses, plus take American History. I got out of  repeating Freshman English by submitting my Freshman essays to the English department head.  It was cool my Freshman English teacher was a famous novelist and script writer (by then).      
So maybe the school pace is too fast. Maybe the teachers can't communicate.  Maybe you are not cut out for performance.  One in a ten thousand music school grads gets a performance job IMHO, and that includes graduate double bass players in the part time small town symphony who are so poor they have to carry their instrument to work on a city bus.  Piano is worse than a string instrument, there is only one pianist in the orchestra, and playing piano concertos is  part time job.  
If you're failing because you are wasting time, that is one thing, maybe you need counseling or some motivationg philosophy.  But if the problem is just not being able to keep up with the work pace,it just means you are in the wrong major or career path or school.  Try something else, maybe at this school, maybe somewhere else.  Good luck, and be happy.  Failing at something and going on to succeed at something else is the Way in this country. 

[gregh]

Indiana Jo, as usual, has his head firmly secured to his shoulders. I have some opinions that I've been reluctant to express because I haven't organized them very well, and because they're not going to be of the "Stick with it, you can do anything!" variety.

It's common for people to change careers a few times in their lives. It is, perhaps, a bit unusual for a first career to really align with the degree, although that might be different for "tool" degrees like accounting and music performance. I knew a trumpeter who went back to school and refitted himself for a career in mechanical drawing. He just wasn't making a living with music, but he had to try, and I suppose he had to know, but that diversion sure put him behind in the career development sense. I know another who's doing well enough performing, teaching, and working part-time at a music store. A retail manager with a degree in computer science that he'd never used, a line manager at a shipping company who had a degree in math, a friend who got a degree in math and then drove a school bus. There have been a few music and history majors at the coffee shop that I frequent. My brother has never used his art degree but he's now developing as a network technician. There's no end to the examples, and they're not the ones writing inspirational career books.

Some people don't make it through the academic rigors, or they overextend themselves. In my freshman physics class there was a dropout rate of around 80%. Probably most of those had been in the engineering program, and if they had made it through the crucible of freshman physics, the subsequent engineering classes would have been a lot easier to handle. I got my physics degree, but I haven't used it yet. I'm working at a nuclear pharmacy-- ten years ago I wouldn't have predicted that. That sort of colors my attitude on the subject.

You feel locked in to your course now because you're young and don't realize what kinds of options are open to you-- locked in and, therefore, failure is not an option. Stressful. But if there was only one career choice that was right for a person, life would have really sucked before manufacturing and information science jobs were invented. People move into whatever spaces are available, they adapt, and things work out.

Talk to a counsellor, think about reducing your course load. But, if it comes to it, before suicide consider modifying your degree program.