Hello everyone - it’s been ages since I’ve posted, but I stilll regularly read and learn from this forum. The experiences of the parents and the talented (and smart) young artists who post here are invaluable to me.
So… my lovely daughter is all packed up and leaves bright and early tomorrow for the long road trip back to school where she’ll start her second year as a vocal performance major.
D woke up to an email this morning letting her know that her oh-so-carefully-selected voice teacher, whom she loves with all her heart and mind, must take a medical leave of absence for the fall. Another teacher has already been engaged to teach the entire studio. Oh my goodness…
While there is some sadness and lots of concern for her teacher, my daughter trusts the plan and also sees the opportunity. “Mom, she’s got lots of connections in (our state) … and she’s an expert in posture - I still have some things I’m working on in that area…”
D is already off to sing a gig this morning. I know this is weighing on her mind, but I’m proud of her for responding in a positive and resilient manner. It’s a very, very long and winding road to becoming a performing artist and there will be bumps and detours along the way. Some situations will seem downright unfair in the moment. As parents, teaching our kids that we have choices in how we respond to the curves in the road is perhaps once of the most meaningful things we can do for them.
My D’s UG teacher had back surgery and was out spring semester of jr year. My D was recommended to another teacher she knew little about (she had retired). It was stressful. Luckily she got a dedicated, knowledgeable teacher with a new perspective…and more connections. In this profession you need to be able to work with different types and different situations and still be your own captain. These situations can be good growth opportunities particularly for steering your own ship in turbulent waters. I’m hoping it will work out for your D!
For anyone reading this thread, I certainly didn’t mean to imply that this was a major crisis or to compare it to any serious health, financial or safety issues that some may be facing. Hope everyone has a great evening.
Thanks for bringing up the fact that “the best laid plans…”, @buoyant !! It’s a needed reminder that no matter how much we want things to go smoothly, bumps and diversions arise. The kids that can roll with it do well, the ones that can’t have a lot to learn.
My D’s teacher in undergrad left at the end of D’s junior year- stranded the entire studio and left the rising seniors to their own devices when it came to applying to grad school and getting through the auditions. Another teacher was brought in but only two of the students made it through the process and into grad school, my D and another girl who made the shift to MT. They are the only ones working in their respective fields today.
I think your D will be just fine!
My sophomore daughter’s beloved voice teacher is still mending and can’t return to teaching yet. Because of some other complications, which are normally manageable, I’ve also learned that this teacher isn’t even recuperating “at home,” which I feel just awful about. She’s going to let the studio kids visit next semester. The good news is that the substitute teacher will continue teaching next semester, so there is continuity for the studio.
I know junior year is very important, of course also senior year, so I’m hoping we’ll know more by summer. I’m praying her teacher recovers fully. It’s heartbreaking not to be pursuing your passion and not to be home.
School is going very well, even though music theory got “a thousand times harder.” Also, my daughter’s decided not to take a class toward her 2nd degree next semester, feeling she needs a break and I don’t blame her. In a way, I think the opportunity to pursue a second degree afforded her some security when she was finalizing her college choices, so I think it means she’s feeling more confident as a musician.
I’m looking forward to having her home on Monday night. Yay! Pretty much everyone has left the school of music campus, but she still has a final Monday on the main campus. Home soon!
Perhaps. I’ll know more next fall. Like everything in life, it’s complicated. The department has been in the national news recently (link below) and coupled with wanting more time for music and wanting less stress, I think her drive for the second degree may be waning.
Hello - for those interested I wanted to provide an update. Also, repeating something I posted upthread, I’m just sharing detours in “the plan” as a parent of an undergrad studying VP at a well known music school. To keep it short, my daughter’s original studio teacher couldn’t teach this year (sophomore year), the studio had a dedicated sub who traveled the whole year (very grateful for her commitment to the studio) and a new teacher has been given a 1 yr contract for this fall, which would be the start of my daughter’s junior year.
My daughter decided to pursue a transfer to another studio for junior and senior year. (She was given 2 weeks from the announcement to having to have her top 2 choices in - today is the deadline.) She observed studio and had a short discussion with the 2 candidates and hopefully she will get one of them.
Something else unexpected - she’s been the victim of some mild bullying in the dorm. Not the stress you need right before juries.
My fingers are crossed for you! I think that she did the right thing to try to move studios.
I’m sorry to hear about the social issues. Your D is NOT alone. My experience was that everyone was on their best behavior most of freshman year and then sophomore year their real personalities came out. There were definitely aggressive students. It wasn’t easy as my D hadn’t experienced these issues to such a high degree until sophomore year. I will say Junior and Senior years were much better bc she knew her friends and completely avoided frenemies. She arranged her housing according to her experiences Sophomore year…and had a really good Jr and Sr year. And it wasn’t just my D. Other students seem to be catching on to some of the obnoxious behavior…and were of the age to “walk away”. Live and learn. And the main “perpetrators” are no longer heard from…as my D is still tight with her UG class.
@buoyant how stressful! Your posts really resonate with me right now, as my S18’s college decision for VP has come down to the teacher selection. For many of the reasons you reference, we are paying close attention to how the school’s replace teachers, how transfer works, if there are enough quality VP faculty on staff in case S18 has to switch studios, etc…I hope she has a great summer and by fall is ready to attack her challenges and carve out her path!
Thank you for the advice and support @bridgenail and @vistajay - it means a lot to me.
We are keeping a close eye on the bullying as the students are normally obligated to stay in the dorm through their junior year. I wasn’t expecting to hear from another family that had experienced this - @bridgenail I think your analysis is spot on. If things continue we’ll petition for a move off campus.
@vistajay - you are WAY ahead of us. We didn’t give much thought to ask about the process for replacing a teacher. The good thing is that my daughter can continue lessons through the summer with this year’s studio teacher. It’s an hour drive both ways but we think it’s worth it for the support and continuity.
@bouyant I did get my D to talk with a few close friends about her experiences. She didn’t want to gossip. I just told her to be factual about experiences and share her feelings. Having a close friend clued in to her feelings really helped. While talking with this friend once (finally she had a safe outlet), 3 gay guy friends picked up a bit of the conversation and 1 felt he was being “shunned” by her (long story about same religious affiliation and him coming out). The other 2 gay guys were, unfortunately, already experts on this type of behavior. They really helped my D understand she wasn’t alone…and that people do mean stuff while smiling at the world. Once she finally started to talk about it and stopped spending time with this person it got better. There was one other scoundrel in the group too…that faded away when she stopped being friendly. My D had never blatantly ignored someone but that’s what it took. Jr and sr year were much better.
Shared publically in case others run into it. Music programs are small. They can be highly competitive. Some people want an edge (even if not in music). They’ll try to mess with your head/confidence. So you don’t have to be “nice girl or boy” if someone’s yanking your chain. I do think the situation is unfortunately common enough. I hope this helps in some way.
My daughter also suffered from bullying while in undergrad…and worse, she also had a stalker that was so frightening the school got the police involved. My theory is that high-level conservatories are pressure-cookers and a lot of the kids who arrive there have spent so much time focused on practicing and competing that they have only negative social skills. Grad school (at the same place) was much better because most of the bullies moved on to different programs. It’s funny, of my 4 kids, this daughter is the most socially well-adjusted and extroverted, but she’s had far more problematic relationships with peers at undergrad and grad, in terms of bullying and competitive behavior. I do think that it’s related to being in such a highly competitive environment.
@glassharmonica - that sounds scary for your daughter. You must have been beside yourself!
Putting all of
these factors together - the “negative” social skills, the competition, the pressure, the small program size, I’ll add in the tough academics - I can see how this bad behavior can take root.
I think if a female vocalist makes it through high school without encountering a lifetime worth of “mean girls”, she is truly blessed. It is the competitiveness / jealousy IMO. You’d think they’d outgrow it by college.
My D hangs with the male instrumentalists. Period.
She has said that nearly everyone she’s met at her small college is beyond nice (feels so lucky). Regardless, she learned long ago to keep her distance and I honestly don’t blame her.
Good luck @buoyant My D had other dorm issues but we were not able to get her released from housing. We ended up paying for it, but she did not stay there. It was worth it for her emotional well-being but I’m still very angry at the school about it.
@dbandmom - Wow, I can imagine that still stings… It’s when these dorm issues crop up that you realize what a revenue stream this is for some schools. I didn’t realize quite how ironclad the contract was until we started asking questions recently…
My D called last night and sounded great - she’s ready for her juries next Tuesday and excited about the operas just announced for next year. Fingers crossed.
Oh wow, guys, these stories are awful. @buoyant@bridgenail@glassharmonica@dbandmom , cheers to your courageous kids. @vistajay I think it is very smart to make teacher selection plus breadth of program (other fine teachers in S’s instrument) a central factor for decision making. As @buoyant ‘s story shows, things happen and teachers leave… and sometimes fit just isn’t right the first time around. Yes, I think these issues might be worse in the realm of VP, somehow. My D has been very lucky so far that the Undergrad environment seems very healthy, albeit competitive. Sigh.
Re: competitiveness in the VP world, hopefully S18 will not see much of that, and certainly every college studio class we have sat in on seemed extremely supportive even at intense music schools. At a local HS aged classical voice competition last year though, a competitor immediately following my son changed his song at the last minute to sing the exact same song as S18, in an apparent attempt to draw a direct contrast (or just show him up). My S18 is pretty mild mannered, but that got his dander up!
A little more on competition/aggression, it can be good too…and all aggression needs to be managed as it will not go away (of course certain lines, like stalking or bullying, shouldn’t be accepted).
My D’s UG teacher was wonderful in many ways. She’s still in touch with my D and is still supportive. But she made it clear to my D freshman year that she needed to up her competitive game. She needed to be more aggressive on getting time/opportunities etc. My D wasn’t getting her weekly lessons in bc she was the last to sign up for lessons and got Friday afternoons. Her teacher traveled a lot of fridays and felt it was my D’s job to “make it work”. My D was kind of confused (as a freshman of maybe 2 or 3 weeks) when her teacher just said she was gone Friday to the whole studio. She was concerned with”bothering” her teacher and didn’t always push hard to reschedule. This happened several times. I wasn’t there so I don’t know everything … but she almost got kicked out of her studio. The teacher suggested she move studios in no uncertain terms and my D went bananas. She fought the teacher to stay in. The teacher did let her stay in the end (I think her fighting it convinced the teacher she could be aggressive).
I know in her sophomore year of overload, her teacher had hard talks with her again. She told my D that the business would eat her alive if she didn’t figure out how to say “no”. She needed to go aggressively after the right opportunities (no matter the competition) and say no to the others (and not worry so much what others thought). She needed to get out of her head and compete. Again she was told to figure it out or consider another studio.
For 4 years that teacher rode my D on being aggressive and competitive (and accepting that from others)…telling her you don’t make it on big stages by being sweet and waiting your turn. And I just thought she was going to teach my D how to sing pretty.
Also, my daughter’s decided not to take a class toward her 2nd degree next semester, feeling she needs a break and I don’t blame her. In a way, I think the opportunity to pursue a second degree afforded her some security when she was finalizing her college choices, so I think it means she’s feeling more confident as a musician.
Like everything in life, it’s complicated. The department has been in the national news recently (link below) and coupled with wanting more time for music and wanting less stress, I think her drive for the second degree may be waning.