THIS IS GOING TO BE VERY LONG, but I’ve been thinking this over for the past 3 years and it’s gotten to the point where it’s keeping me up at night. I’ve been trying to weigh the pros and cons, but I feel like I might be missing some things because I don’t have a ton of life experience. Here’s more or less what’s going on:
I’m in my fall semester of my 3rd year at a very expensive, fairly well-ranked private university. I received a scholarship that paid all of my tuition and about half of my room and board (so it wasn’t “free,” I still have a decent amount of loans). I knew I’d get a decent amount of scholarship money based on a) my demographic- female, mixed race, and b) the major I chose- a STEM major. That’s why I applied to CS, and that’s how I spent my freshman year. Within a couple weeks, I knew I hated my major- but given university policy, I wouldn’t be able to change my major until after my second semester of freshman year. I had to stick it out, keep taking CS classes. My GPA tanked.
Let’s rewind a little. I studied piano for over a decade. I refused to practice at first (as children do, I suppose), but eventually, I began to love it. I’ve never been good at expressing my emotions normally, and piano became a way for me to do that. I was classically trained, and I doubt that anyone could say that my teachers were ever ‘lax’ with criticism- in other words, it wasn’t easy. With academic studies, I’d find every excuse I could not to study- too tired, too hungry, too sore- but with the piano, I didn’t notice much. I once played for a couple hours, when I was angry, and I realized afterwards that (THIS IS TMI, SORRY) half of my toenail had broken off and was bleeding from when I kicked a wall before playing the piano. I was a teenager, I had a temper, I don’t know what to tell you. If I needed to practice for something, I went into a phase where I could sit at the piano and practice for 5, 6 hours straight, take a break, then practice more. Probably not the best for my physical health, but my point is, I’ve never been able to do that with studying. Now that I’m looking back, I’ve noticed that ever since I had started to enjoy piano for myself (since I was about 9, we’ll say), all the people I’ve looked up to were composers or pianists. I didn’t look twice at Marie Curie, even though she’s great and all, because Martha Argerich was who inspired me. And yet I applied for a science degree, just for the money.
Going forward to my high school years, I started having back pains. I thought it was from the violin (I started to play for school because we needed music credits, and piano didn’t count), so I stopped that. It kept getting worse, so I thought there might be something wrong with my piano technique. I went to teachers all over my area- professors, department chairmen, international piano competition winners, graduates of well-known piano performance schools like Julliard and Moscow Conservatory- none of them found anything wrong with my technique. A few even said that if I kept going at the rate I was, in a couple years, I’d be able to get into Julliard. I kept practicing, then the back pains got worse, and one morning, I woke up and I wasn’t able to sit up to get out of bed. I still don’t know what happened- my muscles must have spasmed, I guess. That was what “woke me up,” so I quit piano. I remember crying myself to sleep for at least a month, and even now, I’m not sure my parents knew how big of a deal that was to me.
So, back to that first paragraph, sorry for the long intermission. I started to take private piano lessons at my university because I just couldn’t give it up, meanwhile trying to see if anyone there might know what might be causing the pain. Neither of the instructors I went to knew why, so I started to see multiple doctors. I went so far as to ask professors at my university who did research relating to neuromuscular issues. Nobody had a clear idea of what it could be. Each of them said to do tests, and they all suggested completely different tests. I think it goes without saying that I can’t afford to do all of them. So I gave up on trying to figure out the problem. Even without playing the piano, they’re still happening, so now I’m in a position where I’m dealing with those pains and doing work I absolutely can’t stand, versus my previous circumstance of being in pain but doing work that I can honestly say that I loved. In short, these past three years have been the most miserable years of my whole life, because I know what I want to do with my life, but I just can’t.
I know some people are going to think that there’s something wrong with me, that I’m incredibly lucky to have such a large scholarship for a major that will likely lead to a well-paying career and I’m actually considering throwing that all away, but what’s the point of all of that when I don’t know why I get up every morning? Yeah, some adults hate their careers and they might read this and want to tell me “Boo-hoo. I went through the same thing and I’m paying my bills. That’s all that matters.” But right now, it’s not too late for me to do something about it so I don’t end up like them, feeling terrible and complaining about how much I hate my career every day, but I feel like it’s getting close to being too late.
At this point, the only reason why I’d stay in my current university is for financial reasons- because of loans and because of how much a future career with this degree would pay. As for everything else, my GPA is low and I know it’s only going to get lower, I’ve been trying to ignore this and put it in the back of my mind for years now and now it’s messing with my sleep- I can’t concentrate in class, I can’t concentrate on studying, no matter how much I try. I still play the piano occasionally and those are the only times that I actually feel like I’m doing something worthwhile with my life. I even talked to a therapist throughout last year, trying to see if I could “get over” the piano, but it just reinforced wanting to study piano.
Aside from financial reasons, the other thing I’m afraid of is how to tell my parents- they’ve been the ones paying for me to go to university, and I’m absolutely sure they won’t be happy that I’m “wasting” 3 years. True, those 3 years are technically a “sunk cost,” and all that should be taken into account are the costs of the next year, but I tried explaining that concept to them before and they basically refused to believe it. I don’t want to disregard what they want for me because of how much they’ve done, but I feel like being “mindful” of what they expect of me means that I’m living someone else’s life, someone that I think they want me to be. I don’t have any motivation to work hard in my classes, because I don’t see any progression. I just see myself as working toward more of the same, over and over again, even after I graduate. I keep hearing people say “Oh, you won’t use most of this at work,” but that just makes it worse- if you don’t use it, what’s the point of learning it?? None of my classes inspire me. Sure, some topics are interesting (and I thought a casual “interest” would be enough), but it’s not enough. If I can barely deal with that for 3 years, how will I deal with it the rest of my life?
