Rhargle Flahrgle
So... perhaps I have gone about this whole situation the wrong way. I feel like the choice I made has just become one huge disaster. I finally make a decision on my own for myself that isn't affected by the ideas of anyone but myself. Of course I do something for me that I feel is right and I end up hurting my teacher and quite possibly other people. Who knows...the situation hasn't played out all the way just yet. I can just see it ending up in a huge mess mainly because of miscommunication on my part. I was finally fed up with being at ECU and knowing that I truly wasn't happy here. So I thought about how to change it and the only option was to get out. The only option out with my intended plan of career was back at NCSA. Somewhere where I knew I could still get a very good background and training in music, and somewhere that I knew I would be happy. I think that it is really sad that all of my friends love college and that I could never honestly say that I liked going to ECU. I know I would always say the only reason I was here was because of Ara. Even on the ECU website where students are profiled they talk about how they love ECU and how they knew this was the place for them and the college fit them. Well, quite frankly that is not the case for me. I never wanted to go to ECU when I was in high school in Fayetteville, nothing appealed to me about the college and I knew that all the slacker students at my high school were easily accepted to the college and that was not the type of college I wanted to go to. I wanted to go to a competitive school where my acceptance proved the hard work that I had done in High school. I busted my ass making straight A's and taking honors and AP classes and getting into the top 5% of my class. Why would I want to waste all of my hard work on a school where people who didn’t even care about their school work were accepted. It didn't make sense to me. I had my sight set on UNC and going into medicine. After NCSA I realized music was what I really wanted to do, not medicine. I began interest in the Physician's Assistant Program and realized the ECU had that program in the grad school and while looking into that realized they had a decent music school with a great Violin instructor. There is my reason for applying to ECU. Before hitting ECU my freshman year I was optimistic about the school thinking it was the best choice. I had a pretty much full tuition scholarship, a great violin instructor and the PA grad school program. Initially I wasn’t happy with ECU. During my second week of classes I had already filled out 3 applications to other schools to transfer, I talked to my old Violin teacher about transferring and he told me to wait it out a little while and see how I felt after being at the school for a while. Things got kind of better, I made friends, accepted the music building for what it was going to be, but I still loathed Greenville. ECU is great for a regular soon to be Joe plumber who takes the minimum semester hours, mostly socializes and goes to the club/drinks every Thursday - Saturday night. That’s not what I do and I have no interest in partaking in that scene. I feel like I was doing a lot of compromising to make myself happy. The only way to forget that I wasn't happy was to become so busy that I would forget that I hated ECU. I took the maximum amount of classes, performed with Fayetteville Symphony, took on any playing opportunity provided to me to keep busy I even added on the Music Education major as a job option on top of Performance classes and PA classes.. I knew the dorms played a big role in hating ECU so I figured apartment life my second year would be better. I went apartment hunting and found a place that I thought would make life better. I really liked it and thought I would be happy there. Into my second year, I had pretty much everything I wanted and realized things really couldn't get much better for me. I was in a great position with my housing, scholarship, a double major I enjoyed and a job with the ECU string project . My situation pretty much couldn't be any better, but I still wasn't happy. Realizing that having everything you want didn’t equal happiness made me realize that the only true reason I was interested in being a PA was the salary. After realizing this, why waste my time working my ass off for something that in the end I wouldn't be truly happy doing what I did. So I dropped the PA plans from my agenda. This was really hard because I didn't want to feel like I was giving up on something and I knew that this was something my parents were excited that I was doing along with all of my family who pretty much thought this was what I was going to college to do . So one of the three things that brought me to ECU was out the window, the other two things left were scholarship and my teacher. After thinking....were these two things really that important in choosing a college? Yes about the teacher but money shouldn't be a deciding factor in choosing a place I truly wanted to go to spend four years of my life. Feelings of not liking ECU never stopped and some days I just felt like I really didn't want to be at ECU. I wanted away from the college and felt trapped into the school . I felt as if it was too late to go to another school this far in my education. I finally thought about it and decided if I was to make a decision now was the chance. Not later, when I was a junior and still not happy and really had no option but to tough it out, but now when I was a sophomore and had my last chance. So here we are to wanting to transfer back to NCSA. So my first step in this process was to e-mail my old teacher to see if there was an option of studying with him if I was to transfer back to school . He responded yes and that he would be happy to hear my audition. Moving along I filled out an application and notified Ara of my feelings and actions. I mailed off the application and set up an audition over the break without finishing a full conversation with Ara or my parents. I didn’t initially talk to my parents about filling out an application because I didn’t want them to tell me not to waste my time if they didn’t approve. When bringing up the topic of transferring with my parents no interest was shown in discussion and the topic was changed. Were they not concerned why I wanted to transfer? Granted I hadn’t talked to them about anything written here but I guess that’s a big part of my family’s communication issues. So I basically scheduled an audition without Ara or my parents knowing. Going back to school after break I talked with Ara and he stated how it made him quite angry that I went behind his back going to another teacher saying I wanted to study with them and he wished I had confronted him as soon as these feelings had started. I didn’t want him to feel this way. Quite frankly I don’t know how he could have helped me feeling the way I did and I only contacted my old teacher to see if I had the option of going back to study with him. Now I have an audition in which I told Ara I’m playing two pieces we’ve worked on and one that I worked on with my old teacher in which Ara wasn’t very impressed upon the decision. He has offered to work on the piece with me but I also want to play another piece in place of what I told him. With my old teacher coming to ECU for a master class I feel Ara will talk to him about my audition and find out that I might have auditioned with another piece I didn’t tell him about..…that’s all I need is for that to blow up in my face. Then there is the parent side. As far as I know they don’t even know I have an audition this month. How will they feel when they find this out? What if they are totally against this transfer idea and I stay at ECU and have caused all this unnecessary drama. None of it was intentional but the only thing I knew to do personally it felt like my only option. I feel weird talking about this with my parents which I know I shouldn’t….I have this deep indescribable feeling inside that I have to take this audition and have an option for escape and I don’t want my parents to knock me down from this audition..so I guess in a sense I’m scared of hearing don’t waste your time from my parents. I really wish I had better communication with my parents on a lot of things which has really bothered me lately. I feely like I should be able to easily express these feelings to them but we have never really shared how we have felt about anything with each other before. And not only that I always feel really awkward about expressing my ideas and feelings to others. I guess that’s why I feel I can only express myself through playing music. I know that way I’m not going to be judged on how I feel where as I would be if I said it in words. I’m always worried about what other people are going to think and always have been. I feel like I make my decisions based on other people instead of based on myself. After seeing a movie where 3 women were depressed because they were living their lives hiding their own insecurities by doing various things to present themselves as being ok to others I felt a strange connection. I felt as if I have been living my life to please other people instead of myself. I can see that in many cases. Even in not wanting to come out and tell my parents I didn’t want to be a PA because I didn’t want to disappoint them. I know they just want me to be successful and make a good living to support myself. Right now what I really want is to pursue music to the highest level I can regardless of any salary for a job I might earn. I can always find a job by going back to school but I can’t start my life and go back to music later to see how far I could have gone. To go the distance I need to do it now or else it will be to late. And hopefully if I can make a good living off of doing what I love not caring about luxuries, having good health and being happy, isn’t that being more successful than landing a big comfy job having anything you could dream of but still desiring to be happy? I think so and right now that is what I am aiming for.