How Music Helped Me Through Medical School #BehindTheBlogger

The #BehindTheBlogger this time around is on what keeps me grounded, so I’m going to talk about how music helped me through medical school! :]

(If we’re going to be specific, it helped me not just through medical school, but also through undergrad and grad school too…and y’know, life in general!)

For those of you who don’t know, I used to lead a double life.

Our department was small, and much of our time was spent pretty much living in the practice rooms or on the red benches in the hallways (I took naps on them at least half a dozen times per quarter). We looked out for and supported each other and as much as possible, would come in full attendance to each other’s recitals and concerts.

Courtesy daviswiki.org

De-stressing

Music was my destress major. (This is not to say that it never caused me stress, because holy crud, yes it did, but it was also what provided me with a break from all the science. We had a lot of science/engineering refugees in music.)

I think to this day, our professors still say that our graduating class had the best camaraderie out of all their years of teaching. I still hang out with a couple of em’ (say hello to our chamber trio and my archery decision-making partner in crime!) whenever I get the chance to! <3

For a time, I was very tempted to double-track in music and triple-major (because how cool would it be to also major in Music History and do research on video game music!?)…and graduate with 3 majors–but for the sake of my sanity [since I was already doing so much], I did not.

Learning To Be Adaptable

As the department’s resident emergency accompanist and one of the only pianists in our class, I started getting roped into accompanying my friends’ auditions, performances and recitals pretty early on, and there were a hell of a lot of situations where it really paid off to be able to think quickly, be adaptable (and prepared).

For instance, when…

• I was playing a piece with a friend at an outdoor performance and a breeze blew my sheet music away
• I was accompanying a friend for her jury and she accidentally skipped several bars of her music (I skipped the bars she’d skipped with her and kept playing so they wouldn’t notice)
• I was given the sheet music the day before my friend’s recital because his accompanist backed out on him at the last minute
• I was playing for a 2-hour banquet and ran out of songs to play, so I started making up pieces and no one could tell (yay!)

Reading Nonverbal Cues/Body Language

When you’re performing in front of an audience and can’t actually speak to each other, body language is everything. You need it to convey when to start the piece, when (and to what degree) to slow down or speed up. It’s also helpful for when mishaps happen, when you need to covertly convey to your accompanist that you are running out of air and can’t play it like you did during rehearsals, or that you want more expression.

The collaborations that worked out the worst were always the ones where there was zero eye contact and/or communication, but this translated to the rest of my life as well, and I try to pay attention to nonverbal cues in all my interactions with others.

Performing Under Pressure

In spring quarter of our second year, music performance hopefuls had to play in front of a jury of 5 music department faculty. Generally speaking, I like to get to practice before my performances and auditions since it calms my nerves, but I’d promised to accompany 4 other people before I even got to my own jury. (On the plus side, by the time my jury time came up, they were all already very aware of my identity!)

Performance majors had to prepare a junior recital (30 minutes) and a senior recital, and pianists and vocalists had to memorize all their pieces (that was definitely a load of fun! :O ). We poured a year’s worth of blood, sweat and tears time, energy and work into that moment’s worth of time.

Dedication

Music takes time–time to practice my own pieces, time to practice for others’ performances and our chamber ensembles, time to take all the co-requisite courses… I’d be the first to admit that there were many instances where I didn’t practice as much as I should have because I was trying not to drown in my organic chemistry classes, but music taught me dedication and persistence. Even if you have the talent, you can only get so far if you don’t put in the work for it.

• Do you play any instruments?
• Are there any hobbies that have helped you in other aspects of your life?

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