Where did my future go?
Yeah, never thought I'd actually make a topic like this here. But at this point, this forum's one of the few places I haven't turned to yet.
If everything goes according to plan, I'm going to graduate high school in 2021 and am going to go to college for the next 4 years at least.
To start, let me be very clear. I looked at all the options in the city I'm going to live in. I know what colleges, majors, and courses there are. And I have the ones that are realistically achievable for me noted down.
That's not the problem though. My problem is that I'm being thrown around between two worlds and I don't know which to choose, and I know that no matter which one it's going to be, some aspects of it will suck.
We're a musical family. My older Sister's in the middle of this program at Berklee where she can get the master's in bass guitar, which is going to enable her to teach at universities and stuff. That works out really well for her because she doesn't have anything against teaching, and the hours when teaching an instrument at Uni are low so she can also manage her other projects.
I'm a singer. I love to perform for myself and others, but I don't want to teach. I might answer casual questions about how I personally like to do things, but having fixed students, at fixed times, is something I can't see myself doing. Being a musician in Austria is about the same as it is everywhere else. If you want to live doing just that, you have two options. You have a big break, or you teach. As of now, teaching is out of the question for me. But getting the kind of break you need to be successful requires connections, and most of all, luck. Whether I have the skill or not is up for others to decide, but where luck's concerned I'm completely out, in no small part thanks to Covid.
I mentioned two worlds at the beginning of my post. I also thought of toughing it out till I can get a bachelor's in law, then trying to specialise so I can go into music business/event or contract management. If anything, that would at least let me stay somewhere in the industry. I'm getting a lot of pressure from family and my surrounding environment to do just that, and to do it internationally if I'm able to.
Starting a law major will mean that I'll have to effectively leave music behind for at the very least 2 years, probably a lot longer than that. Firstly, I'll drown in a mass of about 10000 other people who have the exact same idea as I do and are studying law at my prefered Uni. Secondly, I've heard dark stories of how time intensive the degree is, and from what I'm hearing, I won't have anything like a private life as long as I'm enrolled. That private life would, mostly, include music.
It's mostly about the people for me. 95% of all the decent people I know are musicians or friends/supporters of musicians. They are the ones who see past my lack of sight. They are the ones who don't bring any bullshit stereotypes into our interactions and don't think I'm less capable at everything. As long as I'm on stage with the right people, my blindness is gone for me. That little barrier that exists between me and a sighted person doesn't exist with most of them. I just don't want to lose that.
Now if I did the law/business thing, I'd be drowned in a mass of almost 10000 other people, most of which probably don't have the qualities I talked about above. I'd be dealing with all this quiet exclusion bullshit I had to deal with back in my childhood days, and which I have to also cope with today when I'm the wrong crowd. If I go the non-performance road, I'd probably be able to become financially secure if I do things right, but I'd also be consciously turning my back on the thing I really want to do,
at least for the foreseeable future.
It's not that there aren't any education options when it comes to music without the whole teaching thing, but these "degrees" are next to useless. Consider that in Austria, public uni is free of charge as long as you don't take too long finishing your degree, and even the private Unis are affordable for a lot of people without having to wrack up debt. Hell, I even started the application process for Berklee myself, simply because it's one more option to add to the pile. How realistic it is, especially where scholarships are involved, is a whole other question though.
I honestly just don't know anymore and I wish I had another 20 years to figure this shit out.
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