The next few posts will actually be in personal “blog” format, delineating the events that happen in the next few months. I may post some musicology posts between these more sentimental ones.
Ahem…
My feet squeaked as I entered the halls of Tech, one of the largest buildings on the Northwestern campus. I was nervous, moreso than on the performance of Mahler’s Ruckert Lieder I had played last night for my studio class. I had printed the music on cardstock but failed to bind the pages in anything stronger than scotch tape. The result was a disastrous and embarrassing page turning catastrophe, aka the music actually fell to the floor during the end of the performance as I scrambled to pick it up; it was almost comical. Well…at least that will never happen again, or so I hope.
Today was the day I was pitching the idea of “Acoustical Engineering” to McCormick, a program that would essentially meld the arts and sciences into a single entity.
…at least that’s what I planned.
As I raced up the stairs of Tech, I stopped momentarily to look pensively at the snow falling outside one of the windows. My mind was racing; one could say that it was actually wandering over the past six months of thoughts ever since I changed majors.
I was a dual degree B.S. B.M. student in Manufacturing and Design Engineering and Tuba Performance for three years. I took at least seven to ten classes a quarter. It was grueling to say the least, but I decided to change my engineering area of expertise into something more musical. This paradigm shift (man I love that word) resulted in a startling realization: Northwestern didn’t have an acoustics program, let alone an architecture program. The two acclaimed areas that the school was known for: music and engineering, held nothing between the two. There was music and there was engineering, either/or, not both.
Who’s to say I couldn’t change that?
I walked into the undergraduate office about two minutes late. I cringed at the thought: acceptable for a meeting, terrible for a musician. I would get fired on the spot if I had done that in any professional musical setting; “just another thing to work on,” I made a mental note.
While building up the courage to confront the school about this particular area over the past four months, I had emailed a number of professors across a wide array of educational fields that, I figured, could potentially be interested in the subject matter. The only thing I received back, if anything at all, was disinterest.
It made sense: why would the school offer a subject that professors were not compelled to teach? I had reached a dead end, and figured “hell, I have nothing to lose, I’m just going to go for it.” Today was the day I would toss the idea out to an administrative head.
The man I was meeting that day was the associate dean of undergraduate engineering: Mr. Steve Carr. I was incredibly intimidated to talk to him, though I guess my nature is to be intimidated by powerful people. The irony that I regard myself as an affable person was not lost on me as I straightened my full-windsor’d purple tie and walked in.
We shook hands cordially. He seemed friendly, and as I began to introduce myself the familiar waiver of my voice signified that I was nervous as hell. Despite my quavering, he was polite and listened to my pitch in full detail. I specifically stated that I understood the gravity and practicality of a program like this, and wanted to only throw the idea out there, noting that it would be an accomplishment to even get a class in acoustics.
He understood me in full, and between some personal anecdotes about the importance of noise control, I began to understand that he was open to the idea. I remember saying if it were at all possible if he could send this to the dean of the school himself, and he specifically stated, “I’ll make sure he sees it, I’m sure he would be interested.”
I don’t think he understood how my heart almost leapt out of my chest at that point.
He gave me a number of faculty names that could potentially be interested in the subject, and I wrote them down with gusto. We shook hands and parted, and I eagerly began to craft a slew of polite and delicate emails asking some of the faculty about something like this.
What I received threw me back down into the dark pit. “I don’t know why you are bringing this to me.” “I doubt that we could make a major in this topic.” “You seem to be pursuing the ad hoc major already, and that is good, and it may be all you can do.” I was scolded, I was treated like I didn’t know any better, like a ten year old child. I felt like these professors, these people who devoted their lives to teaching people like me, harbored no interest in my motives because they held none themselves for the topic…the topic of education and the pursuit of knowledge. The thought was alien to me on a pragmatic level, but it was not the first time I had been treated in a similar manner.
A lot of professors seemed to approach me as a student before they approached me as a human being.
It was disheartening, that lack of empathy. It stung in a way unfamiliar to me; it was different from the normal stabs at my pride and at my work. I normally shrugged them off, but something stuck this time. I am more determined than ever to see this thing through, to prove them all wrong. I was the underdog on multiple fronts, and have been for quite some time.
Though there is one thing I have learned through undergrad: never underestimate the runt of the pack.
And now with the cards down on the table, I wait. It may be a long one.
~MJ