Lost
It never actually occured me before, but suddenly I really don’t know where am I heading. Ever since my return to start my 2nd semester, I’ve been revolving around the same question:
What am I going to be in the future?
What would my career be like?
What made me think, like SERIOUSLY SERIOUSLY think? Well, a few of my friends around me are graduating… and they are partly in the same field: Conducting and composing. If you ask me last semester I might tell you: I’d be a conductor of course. But after learning for a semester and starting my second one, I found out conducting is NOT easy. I knew it was HARD in the first place… but I really didn’t expect the impact would be so big.
It would be HARDER for me than most of my conducting mates because:
I AM A GIRL.
Well, I know it would be harder for girls to LEARN and master the skill. But I’m not talking about that… the harder things are to learn, the more I like them. It’s "Gender Discrimination" that I’m talking about over here. Something that isn’t in the control of my hands. Don’t tell me there’s no such thing anymore, because I’m experiencing right here, on grounds… hard cold grounds. My dean obviously favors guy-conductors over girls… (my teacher is an exception, he adores me.. HEHEHE.) But in the conducting depart. there’s around 15 teachers, around half teaches conducting and almost half of those favors guy over girls.
Now I think back… Conducting isn’t actually a PASSION. It’s more like a hanger to hang all my "passions" together… The reason I took conducting is because:
1) I love the piano! I can play the piano well, but not well enough to become people like Lang Lang or YunDi Li…I have extremely short fingers that wouldn’t fit as a pianists… And the world doesn’t need another piano teacher…
2) I also LOVE the cello. I can play the cello rather well too, but not well enough to become YoYo Ma or Jaclyn Du’pre, plus I started the Cello at a very late age: 14. So, even with talents, it would be tough for me to race along with other cellist in the world.
3) I love singing too! I can sing very well also, and I have a good voice. But there’s already enough singers in the world, and what could you be if you take up opera-singing? An OPERA singer~ (sweat!). Pop singers? You think it’s THAT easy to step into that industry meh? My voice is some-what pop-dead, I can’t yell any note pass the octave after middle C.
4) I have a thing for Art as well… drawing, sketching, graphics, photoshopping… I can DRAW and I am definitely creative. And people that draw and sketch better than me are a whole lot out there… but the percentage of people that’s as musical talented as I am is much more smaller.
5) Oh, I love to ACT as well! I love being in somebody’s shoes, imagining what their lives would be and totally make a fool of myself in front of audiences. Drama trainers and story-telling-teachers say "I’m a natural"
6) I’m a language person… so I have good language skills, both writing and speaking. And I pick up languages very quickly.
7) Actually I also can study… My science is pas-sable, my maths is quite good, I love history, geography is managable. So I can take up quite a lot of other studying paths.
Oh, I love managing too… I like people to people relationships, I LOVE planning ahead and getting people together. My biggest living prove would be The LittleNoise Choir.
9) How can I forget this: I can COMPOSE too~ My first original work was when I was 7 years old. I wrote a short Erhu Solo piece with Piano Accompaniment… then my latest would be a FULL MUSICAL, including 12 songs, choral arranged and double pianos as accompaniment. I also wrote the script and planned everything…
People say I’m born for the stage, I believe that too… i LOVE the stage. I love the spotlight, and the applauses and love showering you from your audience as you take a huge bow after a wonderful show that came from a LOT of hard work. But having TOO many things that you are capable of is actually quite tiring, especially coming to making choices… I had a REALLY hard time choosing "Conducting"…
Because I am good at a lot, but not GREAT at them. So if I did any of those I listed above alone, I’d be "nothing-much". And I don’t want to be "nothing-much". PLUS, I LOVE to do all of those, it would be heart-breaking to say DON’T do that, you can only CHOOSE bla bla bla. Hence, I chose Conducting… because Conducting you can
1) MUST play the piano
2) Knowing the cello is an advantage, cuz you’ll know and understand more about string instruments
3) Singing is also an advantage especially when it comes to Operas and Musicals and Choral Conducting
4) Art? A good art-person is a good conductor!
5) Being a conductor, you’ll have to be a fool in front of your orchestra team-mates.
6) If you conduct in different places, you must learn new languages quickly!
7) There’s a LOT to study to become a conductor…
A conductor is a leader, and a leader MUST know how to manage
9) We get to learn composing when they train you to become a conductor. Because a conductor needs to see through the eyes of the composer before they bring the music out.
HAHA… I feel better just by typing out everything I listed above. Lolx. But I still have the "Lost" feel. Because I am really starting to doubt whether I would end up as a conductor. And if I DO… where would I be working? There’s a LOT of good conductors out there… Sigh…Where do I start???
Lost.
