BY MYLES OAKEY, 2016 CUTCOMMON YOUNG WRITER OF THE YEAR
What sort of student will you choose to be in 2017?
“Mate!” he yells out from across the campus courtyard, attracting a few curious looks.
I don’t blame them for double-taking, he’s not hard to miss. In first year, I only knew him as ‘towel pants’: that’s the name you get when, as one does, you wear shorts made of a bath towel – sometimes matched with a Hawaiian shirt, but not always.
There’s a lot of vibrant colour to take in, especially with his fiery red curls that drop down to his shoulders, and the ginger beard of a Viking.
He skates up to me on his Carver, but not in a Hawaiian shirt – today he has an aqua button-up, left open to reveal a white singlet. I only notice because it flaps behind him in the wind like a cape.
“How’s it going, mate!?” he says, jumping off his skateboard, wrapping his arms around me for a cuddle. “What are you up to?” he adds.
Dylan, as I now know him, is always smiling, but he cracks a good laugh when I tell him: “I’m just heading up to the library. Gonna do some related readings”.
“Oh yeah! I’m just heading up to do the same!” he says, stretching out his face and widening his eyes before cracking another smile.
He pauses.
“Oh, you’re serious…”
We’ve been laughing about it for a few years, now. Dylan often jokes that he’s heading off to do some related readings. We laugh because we both know that if he has the time, he’ll be squeezing in a few hours out on the surf. Yet, as well as we get along, we both take fairly different approaches to university. Wherever you sit between me and Dyl’, it doesn’t matter: everyone comes to make their own choices. But the least you can do is think about what choices are best for you.
I knew when I took up a degree in the arts that I’d come to be somewhat comfortable with the not-so-instrumental value of that piece of paper I was about to spend four or five years working so hard for.
The question was always thrown at me: ‘You’re studying music? So what can you do with that?’.
Whether it be my friend’s mum, the doctor, or the lady at the post office – they all have a point. But at the same time, they missed the central one: that studying the arts is intrinsically valuable. It’s valuable in itself, not for anything.
The doctor’s daughter plays piano, by the way. She loves it.
So, it’s not that the time studying isn’t worth anything – for me, it’s worth a great deal – but only if you make it mean something. Whether you see yourself closer to Dyl’ or myself, university offers up new ways of thinking, and encourages you to do the same. And in doing so, it asks you to be reflexive about our own music culture, and just whereabouts you sit within it; if there’s even room for you to sit, or if you need to make room of your own.
My advice is to sort out your priorities, because time, I’ve found, is the most valuable thing you can allow yourself. For an arts student, research, writing, performing, composing – as you well know – aren’t the sort of things that can be crammed well. They’re time-intensive and intellectually challenging, that is, if you’re giving them what they ask of you.
“Well, I passed, ‘Ps get degrees’, aye?” so the admittedly true but lax saying goes. But still, in the arts, marks are an indication of how well you’ve engaged intellectually with the task. Did you make an insightful contextual decision on interpretation, or consciously imply harmony over difficult chord changes? Or did you just get down the dazzling muscle memory? Did you read widely and critically enough to develop your own argument and throw around those of other thinkers?
It’s up to you where you set the bar, but I’d recommend starting high – and trying to leave it there.
Dyl’ is a great mate. We’ve performed together in Balinese Gamelan for years. Friends make up some of the best bits about the university experience. And those friendly connections are likely to become important professional ones down the track. But in general, friends also tend to shop online and flick through memes all lecture. And that’s ok, too. For me, I’ve spent a few years committed to sitting up the front, taking notes, asking questions, and getting into discussion. I have to say that since then, as isolating as it can be, I’ve progressed every semester, and I’ve managed to keep some friends, too.
My mate Aaron said to me late last year: “Honestly mate, next semester, I’m getting serious. I’m knuckling down, I’m sitting up the front with you. We’re going to smash it”. I hope this semester, you feel inspired to take Aaron’s lead, and try to leave those waves for Dyl’.
Whatever you choose, good luck.
Image credit Nick Baker.
