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Berklee Lesson #1: Intimidation Into Inspiration

"If you're here, you're cool."

After a good few months of finishing the semester at UNT, booking plane tickets, scrambling to get my bags together and move, I had a sudden realization-- well, actually more of a crisis. "What if I'm not good enough?!" I started realizing the whole journey I had been on to get into Berklee-- the audition, the application, the hours of practicing and preparation-- it was all just a given, every single one of these 4000 musicians had done it too. And every single one of them had the support of their friends and family, the same motivation, the passion. And a lot of them are certainly a hell of a lot better players than me. I mean, I would consider myself a decent musician, but I wasn't playing for thousands of people at the age of four! The thing is, once you step into Berklee, you aren't really labeled as "the musician" anymore, because everyone is a musician! You just go back to being a regular nobody, and you start to wonder what it is you have been doing with your life all this time. People start asking you questions like, "other than music, what are you interested in?"

Other than music?! That's like saying, "Other than food, what do you like to eat?"

As I walked to the performance center for a lecture, I must have passed by 5 different musicians which all made me think, "I can never, ever be that good." Then, when I heard about the inhumane idea that every student was going to have another audition, and given a rating between 1-8 (and be directly compared to all of the other incredible students), and I was just about ready to bail out and run the 1500 miles back to Houston.

That's when Ron Savage, chair of the Ensemble department, said 5 words that brought me back to sanity-- "If you're here, you're cool".

Which basically translates to: If we let you into Berklee, you must be a damn good musician, so chill out. Every student that gets into Berklee has the potential to be as great as the musicians who come out of it.

"Accept where you are now."

Another great piece of advice-- Berklee is just a jumping off point. People (like me) get so caught up in the competition, get so used to being able to stand out in the crowd that they feel lost if they don't. If you can accept that you are not going to be the best musician upon entering (if you were you wouldn't need to go there), then you can start to learn from the immense talent of others instead of feeling overshadowed by it.

So the first lesson I have learned from Berklee is: Don't worry about where you're are, worry about where you're headed. Music education is more about progress than anything, and as long as you are making progress every day, you will be very well off. To quote Roger Brown, the president of Berklee, "if you get only 1% better each day for four years, you will be 2,078,007.24 times better by the time you graduate". Sounds like a pretty relieving statistic to me.

And remember, even the best musicians have weak spots. Someone who is a great player might be a weak writer; an amazing sight-reader may have sub-par technical skills. Everyone has something to learn, and everyone has something to offer. And if you can figure out how to learn from every person you meet at a place like Berklee, you will be well on your way to achieving your dreams.