| I hesitate to get into this, but I have a funny story from my student days (ancient history, sorry) that I’d like to share.
I was sitting mid-semester in an 8 AM theory class at one of the “good” schools discussed here frequently. The PhD prof (apparently a disgruntled performer) suddenly looked at us and said, “Why are you all here? How many of you want performing careers? Let me tell you, my college roommate barely passed any academic class, but she’s now playing the piano all over the world!! I was like all of you – good grades, conscientious, and here I am teaching theory! Get out of here now!”
I didn’t take her at her word, maybe I should have! Nothing like this ever occurred again. To this day, I don’t know what precipitated the outburst. Mid-life crisis??
PS. I've also known teaching collegues to tell their college students to put less emphasis on the academics and more in the practice room.... |