Re: HS band woes - argh


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Posted by Megan on April 12, 2002 at 20:19:41:

In Reply to: HS band woes - argh posted by Dan Mordhorst on April 09, 2002 at 18:52:08:

Dan,
You have worked 3 years to get to where you are, oking your teacher day in and day out, while you work you tail off going to lessons to become a better musican not for him, not a better grade, but for yourself.
I went through the similar experience, I worked my tail off for four years with my band director trying to understand why he didn't like me, as a tuba player who refused to wear skirts to class and liked to airy flutes who talked all through class. He would find great pleasure at launching into a five or ten minute speech as to why I was a bad person and didn't dersever to be in band when ever I was goofing off with my friends, (gee what else are you suppose to do when you have 50 measures of rest? and we were sure to be quiter then the flutes) Anyway my goal was to be a member of the all-state band, I'm from New York so this was no small deal. I had a private teacher, David Margison who I had been going to since sixth grade and he was a great teacher, until I realized in the middle of eleventh grade (actually about 3 months before the audition), when I had only one more year to make all-state, the previous year I was an alternate, that I had saddly out grown him. I found Max Culpepper, who is the Director of Bands at Dartmouth and the greatest person and techer I have meet, and we worked together until I had to leave for college (even now i still wonder why i'm not at dartmouth) and I got a perfect score on my audition and made it to all-state. Ok so the relationship this has to band is I had to be inrolled in my high school band in order to be able to go to all-state. So i was in band for the first part of my senior year. Then the second part I quit. I did lose the senior band award which I had been working towards since my freshman year, and I went to the concert when they awarded it, and it hurt.
My advice would be to really think if it's worth letting your teacher get the better of the situation. If the senior award is the most important thing to you then think about what it's going to stand for and if you are going to want to represent those goals. If you are then you would need to get back into band so that you stay involved in the program. I guess worrying about your grades is also depending on what you want to make important. If you want to make it important that your band director get the upper hand and make you miserable and take away the things you love and have worked so hard for then yes, your grades will matter. But if you think you did the right thing then you shouldn't worry about your grades (I know thats hard to here cause your thinking about going to college).
It's funny when I got to college I thought i wouldn't have to deal with band directors who umm where "rigid" in a sense and yet I have found they are worse then high school which is very dissapointing, so this might be a good chance your to learn how to work with some you may not like, but have to be with.
Good Luck!


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