Alice’s Adventures in an Arts Career

I just received an offer of admissions from the School of Music at Memorial University for their graduate program in choral conducting.  I’m not sure I really have the right words to describe how I feel right now.  All I can say is that I legitimately cried when I read the letter.  I feel so happy and relieved and validated and excited and scared and proud and shocked and a whole bunch of other emotions that I’m still trying to sifted apart.  But above all else I am happy.

Truth be told, this whole application and audition process which started last October and took me to both ends of the country has been a nightmare.  I truly would never wish the amount of stress, anxiety, fear and self doubt that I experienced on anyone and I never want to have to do this again (though something tells me I will one way or another).

But it’s all over for now and after months of rejection and failure I finally have what I set out to get.  I am so proud and astonished with myself that I actually went and achieved something that I’ve been talking about for several years now.  I realize the work has only just begun.  I haven’t even started school and this process will not truly be complete until I finish the maters degree.  But this is the first big step and it was the goal of the entire past year. It makes me feel so good to know that I accomplished it.

I’m right now in the warm fuzzy stage were I can bask in the glow of this wonderful achievement.  I don’t yet have to start worrying about how I’m going to move out to St. John’s or where I’m going to live or any of those details.  I am just going to enjoy this feeling for a little while before those inevitable stresses and anxieties take over.

This is what I wanted. Memorial is where I want to be and now I get to do it. I am so happy.

I am cautiously hopeful.  The audition went very well and I received some very encouraging and positive feedback that lead me to believe I have a good chance.  But I’m trying not to build my hopes up too much.  I’ve had the rug pulled out from underneath me too many times these past few months for me to set myself up for another tumble.

The choir was stunning.  Just stunning.  I was amazed at how responsive they were, though I suppose I should have expected it from such a fine and high caliber group.  Their responsivness and dynamic sensitivity was so precise that it took me a few moments to adjust.  It was like getting the feel for a new clutch.  I had to figure out how much exaggeration or subtly in my gesture effected the choir.  It was such a pleasure to conduct them.

The written exams went much better than my previous attempts, though I would like to go back simply because I felt I could have done more.

The agonizing part now is the waiting.  I was supposed to hear by the end of this week, however the announcement has been pushed until the beginning of next week.  I’m getting rather antsy.  I keep checking my e-mail obsessively and running the events of that day over and over in my head wondering if I did enough.

So, keep your fingers crossed for me.  I really want this one.  I loved every second being out there and I’d love to live there.  And I feel so close… tangibly close and yet not quite.  It’s driving me nuts.

I have been turned down by two more schools.  The list of rejections now consists of UofA,  UofT and Western.  Everything now rests on my Memorial audition next Monday.  I am feeling pretty down.  I might debrief on the UofT audition later since it was pretty cool.  But not now.  Right now all I want to do is crawl into a hole and go away. That is all.

I’ll be auditioning for UofT tomorrow.  I’m am extremely nervous and anxious and scared and worried.  I want it to go well so badly.  I wish I could feel excited and happy since I’m going to be conducting and I love to conduct, but I’m more nervous than anything.  I’ll be conducting the MacMillan Singers.  The standards are very high and I’m hoping I can perform up to their expectations, or at least not make a fool of myself.  I want to feel good about this but I am just scared and feeling a lot of pressure to do well especially since I’ve already received a rejection from Alberta and haven’t heard anything from either Western or Memorial.  As of right now, this is the last bit of control I have in this process unless I get an audition invitation from Memorial. So, I’m feeling a little bit like my graduate school hopes are resting on tomorrow.

I know this is a terrible feeling to go into an audition with.  I should feel completely confident and go in like I’m going to rock it.  I wish I could feel like that now, but I don’t so I’ll have to fake the confidence tomorrow I guess.  It’s not like I haven’t done that before.

I’ll be conducting the  ‘Credo’ from the Bach B Minor Mass and Movement 1 of  ‘Suite de Lorca’ by Rautavaara.

Anyway, wish me luck.  Hopefully everything will go swimmingly.

It’s the waiting that is killing me.  Of all the things in this whole graduate school application and audition process it is the waiting that upsets and frustrates me the most.  Waiting to hear your fate as your vision of your entire future hangs in the balance.

I’m waiting to hear back from Memorial University about whether or not I will be invited for an audition in March.  I’m nearly going bonkers waiting.  I should be hearing the results any day now and the longer it takes the more anxious and nervous I get.  This isn’t even the acceptance stage, this is only to see whether I make it to live auditions or not.  Even if I’m invited I still have to fly out there and perform and I could still flunk it just like Alberta.  But of course the first bridge to cross it getting to that audition and so I’m waiting.

I really want to audition for Memorial.  The more I learn about the program and the more I listen to people talk about the school and how wonderful St. John’s is and how wonderful the student environment is and how wonderful the music culture is in Newfoundland the more I want to go. But I can’t go yet because I’m waiting.

I really worry that I won’t get an invitation.  If I don’t that effectively reduces my chances of getting into grad school this year down to two schools: Western and U of T.  I don’t like those odds.  Oh, that reminds me, I’m also waiting to hear from Western on the fate of that application.

I keep telling myself I got an audition invitation from UofT based on the DVD I sent in and I sent in the same DVD to Memorial, so there shouldn’t really be any reason that I get an invitation from UofT but not Memorial.  If I was good enough for UofT I should be good enough for Memorial, right?! UofT is supposed to be the really hard school with extremely high standards; their audition process asks for much more than any other school. But then I think maybe Memorial doesn’t care about UofT standards and they just won’t give me an audition regardless of what UofT thinks of my DVD.

You see what happens in all this waiting! I have no control, I have to idea what’s going to happen and all I have is time to spend waiting and worrying myself sick with all the “what if’s” that I can’t possibly answer until I get a letter in my mail box. GAAAAHH!  It’s driving me nuts!  I just want to go to grad school.  That’s all I want.  Is that really so much to ask?  I would also just like someone to let me know where I stand and what is happening with my applications.  Someone, please just tell me.

Even if it’s bad news, I’ll be terribly upset and sad and I’ll mope around for a good long while, but at least I’ll know and I can stop this incessant worrying.  Granted, I’ll start worrying about something else, namely another year of being out of school and living a directionless life.

God, I hate grad applications.

I received an official response from the University of Alberta today.  I have not been accepted into the program.  I know I said I wouldn’t be surprised if it happened, but it still hurts and I’m feeling a little down right now.  It’s also made me even more  nervous  about my up coming University of Toronto audition next week.

I’m extremely anxious to get into a program for next fall.  I don’t know what I’ll do if I have to do another year of being out of school and sort of aimlessly drifting through my life.  I just want to get back into school and do this masters.

Well, I guess I have to put this rejection behind me and move on to the next audition. And it’s not like I’ve never experienced rejection before.  It’s something of a constant in an artistic career, but it doesn’t mean it feels any less awful each time it happens.

My old high school has written me up in their online newsletter.  A few weeks ago I was contacted by one of the grade eleven students with a series of questions on the topic of “If Thou Wilt, Remember” and my general experiences as a university music student and composer.  My answers have been compiled into a nice composer biography and interview.  You can check it out here.

I can’t wait to go hear the performance.  I’ve been looking forward to it for nearly a month now.  I even went shopping and picked out an outfit for the evening.  I’m going to go looking like I’m just effortlessly fabulous and have my life all pulled together- even if I really don’t.

I really need to enjoy all these good feelings of accomplishment and competence this week because next week is my University of Toronto audition and I’m even more terrified of it than I was for my U of Alberta audition.

I have just started my first grad school application.  Boy, this feels surreal.  I know I’ve talked about doing grad school for nearly three years now.  But, now that I’m actually starting the process, it feels so daunting and it suddenly makes the idea more real than ever.

I still can’t believe I’m actually doing it.  There is so much to do in such a short period of time.  Once again, I have to pull together the sum of my musical and academic experiences and convince people that I am the best candidate for the job. And yet again, the little voices of self-doubt remind me that there must be thousands of others out there who do what I do, only better.  I look at my grades; they are good, but they could be better.  I look at my conducting technique: it’s good, but it could be better.  When they ask what my career aspirations are, what feats of glory do I hope to achieve that would make me worth their investment, I flounder and the only words on my lips are “I want to be a conductor.”

Sigh.  This is exactly how ungrad applications felt over four years go, only much, much worse. But, I’ll keep at them.  In reality, what is the worst that can happen?  They could say no and then I would be in the exact position I am in today, and I’m pretty happy today.  So, I’ll breathe deep, take the plunge and hope for the best.

I still detest applications.

Well, it’s all over and done.  I finally have a shiny piece of paper that declares me a graduate of The University of Western Ontario with a Bachelor of Music: Honors Education degree.  I feel good.  I feel accomplished.

I started graduate school research today.  I am now offically scared and have a lot of work to do in a very short amount of time.  Time to buckle down and write application after application.

My university convocation ceremony is in roughly fifteen hours.  In fifteen hours I will walk across a stage and leave the other side an official university graduate with a bachelor degree in music and a minor in English.  While the meaning behind the ceremony is tremendous, the event itself is less exciting.  I will literally walk across a stage, kneel before a chancellor I have never met before, nor will he/she know me or a single thing about my four year process, I will be robed, be “admitted” and walk off the other side where I will pick up my degree.  The whole process I’m sure will take less than 3 minutes.

However, the four years that those three minutes commemorate are far more significant.  My undergraduate career took several twists and turns and I’ve come out the other side not exactly in the place I initially expected.  I went into first year so confident in my direction and I’ve left with more possibilities than I ever considered before.

Upon receiving my acceptance into Western, I was sure the music performance degree was the path I was going to take.  I was going to perform and become a great singer.  I was singularly focused in my goal with little thought to other potential avenues.  Composing, choir, conducting, acting, teaching…these were all things I just enjoyed doing, but were never supposed to become anything more than hobbies.  I am now leaving my undergrad with two choral publications to my name, a chamber choir and multiple community and school theatre credits including set design, music direction and acting.  My path has been redirected toward conducting but now it is longer so narrowly defined.  I perhaps feel both more lost and more assured about where I am going to go from here.

I am receiving my degree with an absolute sense that I can and will continue to make music, art and performance a primary element in my life.  I am more comforted than ever that I truly can make this whole “art thing” work.  However, more than ever, I feel I have more options open to me than ever before and it is unquestionably daunting.

If not for the ceremony, I am looking forward to receiving my degree and celebrating with family and friends.  The best part of course, beside the dinner and wine with said family and friends, is that for the next three days after graduation I have non stop rehearsals for the multiple musical endeavors that are currently occupying my life and making me so happy. I am literally leaving school and jumping right back into the things I love doing.  All in all, it’s a pretty good time to be me.