BY GABRIELLE RUTTICO
I recently watched Disney-Pixar’s new release Monsters University. At the time, I was about two weeks from moving out of home to study music at the University of Western Australia. I had thought that the studio who brought us classics like Finding Nemo and Toy Story would be able to help me prepare for what was to come.
I was SO wrong.
Mike Wazowski strolls onto campus. The sun is shining. Three-eyed birds are singing in the background. He enrols, finds his accommodation, unpacks his one (!) bag and sets about studying. Within a week he is at the top of the class. And the sun is still shining.
This is a little more realistic:
Gabby Ruttico sprints onto campus, 15 minutes late. The sun is most certainly shining – it is almost 40 degrees. UWA’s famous peacocks squawk so loudly that she can’t hear her lecturers. In the past week, she has spent over 12 hours just trying to sort out a timetable, let alone any of the other enrolment procedures. After gradually unpacking lots and lots of bags at the on-campus accommodation, she would set about studying, but… but… there are so many other things to do…
…and within a week, I am nowhere near the top of the class!
However, that is little stuff and fairly amusing when compared to Mike Wazowski’s experience. The biggest problem I and many other music students have at uni is finding time to practise.
When the conservatories amalgamated with universities a few years back, music degrees were forced to adopt the standard academic protocols of the other majors. These included a compulsory first-year Communications unit to learn referencing, writing essays in every unit and sitting a written exam each semester. Putting these into a music major is like trying to fit a saxophone into a flute case. Most of the time, music students are better off spending an hour in a practise room rather than an hour writing a reflective essay. So, now there are increased academic demands as well as the expected amount of practise we have to do. Then there is a part time job to pay for food and concert tickets. Oh, and fitting in the social events and relaxation time that you need as a human being to thrive.
Looking to the long term, educators such as Richard Gill are attempting to convince the government to stop cutting their funding to the arts and give conservatories a bit more freedom. That’s awesome, but probably won’t happen in time to help us musos already at uni.
So what do we do about it right now, this minute? I have come up with a few options:
1. Stay up until midnight practising after writing essays all day
2. Flunk all written exams and refuse to write essays so you can practise
3. Stay stuck at a computer doing written work and only practise for five minutes a day
4. Move overseas and study music (Richard Gill recommends Finland)
5. Give up music and become a doctor
To be honest, I’m not digging any of those. The only other answer then, is to become more efficient with our time. Cut back on Facebook. Don’t join the University Medieval Club (learn from my mistakes). Get your mum to cook you dinner. My personal favourite, don’t drink and get smashed every night – you save a heap of time the next morning when you aren’t hungover!
In regards to practising more efficiently, there are a million ways improve and I am not going to pretend to be an expert. What works for me is to think of more inventive ways to practise certain passages, for example, playing them backwards or with a different bowing. Your teacher/university lecturer would be able to give you a heap of advice here and trust me, it is worth asking.
So, regardless of if we are practising or studying, time seems to be more precious a commodity than good coffee. Whatever we decide to do with our time, let’s do it as well as we can so that eventually one day we will have enough money for a one way ticket to Finland.
Or Monsters University.
Image: Wikimedia Commons.
