Posted by Graham Smith on July 09, 2001 at 21:53:05:
In Reply to: How many college hours?? posted by Matt C. on July 07, 2001 at 15:26:06:
What Ken and Doug had to say about this is right on the money.
I was a late-comer to the music dept when I was in school long ago, so I already had a bunch of the general core hours (English, math, etc.) that I'd picked up while wandering thru two previous majors. Fortunately, I was able to talk to dean of the liberal arts college into letting me keep most of them when it came time to slide a degree plan thru the door in my senior year!
However, I knew a lot of people, music ed majors in particular (since they had a lot of classroom pedagogy and general education courses), who tended to take all the nifty performance and theory courses in the music dept and put off the "academics" for as long as they could. Then, suddenly, in their jr. year, BINGO! They had another three or four semesters worth of courses that they had to stay around to pickup, sometimes more, and because of the scheduling cycle that could take a very long time.
They also had to deal with the reality that all of these were "tough" in that they required a lot of non-fun non-music work, so they'd have been a lot more palatable spread out over the four year track.
The frequent result of this was an abandoned college career- they didn't finish.
One other thought- don't forget to plan in your practice time. You'll spend several hours a week with that horn, and if your place requires music majors to take enough keyboard to pass a piano proficiency exam (mine did, even though I was not a keyboard major), you will spend several more hours a week working on that until such time as you can convince the music faculty that you have the required level of (minimal) proficiency in piano or whatever other keyboard they let you play for this.
So, when planning your time, don't forget to figure in your practice time, because it will eat a lot of your week.
And, if you have a job (I did) that requires much of your time, better not forget that.
Not to mention sleeping, etc., but I recall that being wayyyy down the list.
Good luck!