You know the struggle of balancing music classes with academics in school, and not having the time to practice? That was me in 9th grade, grappling with an overbooked schedule, I hardly practiced. Flash forward to 12th grade where everything had changed. Through three key steps I took, I had a better balance in my schedule, allowing me enough time to practice.
I'll share three strategies I developed to manage my commitments, align my class choices, and carve out substantial time for practice.
First we dive into discussing priorities. Everyone's priorities are different and it is important for you to understand your own. Next we talk about how these priorities fit in with choosing academic classes. Finally, we finish off with touching on the importance of giving yourself grace. You are doing this for the first time, so it is important to be patient with yourself.
If you like what you heard, don't forget to subscribe/follow the podcast!
You know the struggle of balancing music classes with academics in school, and not having the time to practice? That was me in 9th grade, grappling with an overbooked schedule, I hardly practiced. Flash forward to 12th grade where everything had changed. Through three key steps I took, I had a better balance in my schedule, allowing me enough time to practice.
I'll share three strategies I developed to manage my commitments, align my class choices, and carve out substantial time for practice.
First we dive into discussing priorities. Everyone's priorities are different and it is important for you to understand your own. Next we talk about how these priorities fit in with choosing academic classes. Finally, we finish off with touching on the importance of giving yourself grace. You are doing this for the first time, so it is important to be patient with yourself.
If you like what you heard, don't forget to subscribe/follow the podcast!
When I was in 9th grade, I hardly practiced, not because I didn't want to, but because the balance between my academics and music were way off. I thought that it would be impressive to sign up for every single music class under the sun. So that's exactly what I did. I signed up for a band, honors band, orchestra, choir, jazz band, marching band and the musical, and on top of that, I dumped a bunch of different honors classes, and this left me extremely burnt out and not any better at Oboe. Flash forward to 12th grade, where this was completely switched. I had enough practice time and my academics were balanced accordingly. In order to get to this stage, however, there were a lot of things that I changed and, to be honest, I am so grateful that I did.
Speaker 1:
Hello and welcome to the Confident Musicianing Podcast. I am your host, eleanor, and after countless practice sessions, a ton of broken reads and seven different music school acceptances in three different countries, I have learned a thing or two about savoring your practicing, becoming your best practice companion and actively working towards your musical goals, and I want to share this with you Because I want you to become your best musical self. Are you with me on this? Let's get started. Okay, welcome back to another episode. Oh my gosh, I am so excited about recording this one because I think that this is a really important thing to discuss. So today we are going to dive into three strategies that I use to balance academics and music when I was in high school.
Speaker 1:
Number one we got understanding your priorities. If you want to study music, that is a priority. If you want to study something else after school or high school, that is a priority. If you want to study abroad, or maybe in your home country, that's a priority. If you want to study at a university, compared to, maybe, a more specialized music school or academy, that is also a priority. And also, your priorities are not going to be the same as other people's priorities. That is important to remember. So I challenge you to grab a pen, grab a pencil, grab some paper and jot down what your priorities are, whether that is studying in your home country, studying abroad, what you're going to study, what type of school that you're thinking about studying. And it's also okay to not have everything down Like you don't have to know everything. For me, at least, I didn't know for sure which country I wanted to study in until about two weeks before I made my decision. So it is absolutely okay if you have questions about something, are not sure about something, or maybe just have no idea about something yet. That is absolutely fine. But try to grab a pen or a pencil and some paper and just jot down what you already know, because this is going to help you when you pick your classes. Now this leads into number two, really, really well. Number two is picking classes accordingly. After you've thought about those priorities, pick classes that will match with that. For instance, if you are planning on going to a specialized music school, that will look different in your class schedule than if you're going to do a double major in music and biology at university. Obviously, if you're going to do music and biology, those biology classes are going to be more important than if you just do music. Also, in terms of choosing music classes, those are important to choose, but make sure that you choose music classes that will fit you.
Speaker 1:
For instance, I did way too many music classes in ninth grade considering what I wanted to do. I wanted to play oboe, but at school I was singing in the choir, playing viola in the orchestra, playing guitar in the jazz band and playing vibraphone in the marching band. I played oboe in the honors band and the regular band, but that was wasting a lot of my time, especially since I wanted to just do oboe after high school and then, during the pandemic, all of a sudden everything shut down. And this was the end of my ninth grade year, everything shut down All of a sudden. All the rehearsals, all the practices were just done and I had time and I realized crap, I haven't been practicing my oboe and this is what I want to do and I need to practice my oboe. I've just been absolutely completely distracted with all of the other things that I had to do. I had so many honors classes, I had so many tricky stuff going on and I realized I just need to sit down with my oboe and start to actually practice. And that's exactly what I did.
Speaker 1:
I did tenth and eleventh grade completely remote, so I made sure that I had time to practice and by the time I got back to twelfth grade, which was in person, I made sure that my classes complimented what I wanted to do, which was oboe. For instance, I made sure the music classes that I took were about oboe. Now, don't get me wrong you can take, you know, you can sing in the choir if you don't want to, like just do classes that have to do with your instrument. If you want to. You know, experiment maybe do something else, like that's fine, but what I? My issue was that I was doing way too much all at once and it was extremely hindering what I wanted to do, which was oboe. But when I got back to school in person in twelfth grade, I picked music classes that would allow me to practice and also academics that would allow me to practice.
Speaker 1:
Now I'm not saying, just do easy classes. It's important to you know, have some hard classes in there. But really think about which hard classes you're choosing. For example, in twelfth grade I chose AP German and AP English language. Now these classes are advanced placement, they are advanced, they are hard. But for me, for instance, for AP German, that class I really, really enjoyed because I am very conversationally comfortable in German. I learned a lot in AP German but I already speak German for fun, like I've had oboe lessons completely in German, because that's something that I just enjoy doing. So, ap German even though it was a difficult class, like we talked about grammar and we talked about, you know, some difficult stuff. For me it was really, really fun, so it felt just like a lot of fun. Also, with AP English, right, english is not something that I enjoy doing outside of school, but it was just really fascinating and I made sure that I enjoyed those classes.
Speaker 1:
I think that that is so important when you do hard classes, especially if you're going to do music or something that maybe those classes aren't gonna be like. You know, english isn't directly correlated to music. It is important to try to make them as fun as you can and as engaging as you can. And then it is also a good idea to sprinkle some easier classes, like in 12th grade, my history class was very, very easy and I remember doing that on purpose. I wanted to make sure that I had a class that just was something that I just was just gonna sit through and enjoy and not really have to, you know, work hard for, and that is also very important. So it is good to have a balance, but everyone's balance is going to be different, which means that you need to make sure that you have your priorities right and those priorities can change. Remember, they can always change, they can always adjust, they can just move about a bit Like that is completely fine, but it is important to focus on the priorities and choose classes accordingly to that Number three we got give yourself some grace.
Speaker 1:
This is something that I did not do in 9th grade. I stress myself out so much and I did not practice. I mean, we already established this because I was too focused on academics, but I didn't give myself any grace and I am such a huge perfectionist so I made sure that I got good grades in those classes, and so much so that it just really really did not help not only my practicing but also my mental health. It just wasn't a good mix at all. So it's important to give yourself grace.
Speaker 1:
You are navigating this for the first time. Think about that for a second. You are navigating whatever you are going through, whether it's high school, whether it's a different type of school, whatever it is you are going through it for the first time. You are navigating your life for the first time, which, if you think about it, it's kind of insane, and that means that you like that is amazing. You are doing a great job navigating your life for the first time. So Giving yourself some grace one.
Speaker 1:
Maybe you don't get the grades you want, or maybe you don't do the thing that you know you really wanted to do, or maybe you didn't get the audition or something. That is okay, because you're just navigating through this whole thing for the first time, and that's fine. So giving yourself grace is really important, especially when you're super stressed, especially when you know it's getting difficult with academics, with music. Giving yourself grace and being like, okay, it's okay to be stressed and it's okay to maybe not do as well as I thought that I was going to do, that is a really really good thing. To just give yourself grace, okay.
Speaker 1:
So let's do a recap real quick. Number one we got an understand those priorities, whether it's music, whether it's something else, whether it's studying abroad or in your home country, whether it's a university or maybe a music school or Academy that those are all priorities and it's really important to understand what you want and remember you don't have to know everything and they can definitely change. Number two we got pick classes accordingly. Whether that's your music classes or just your academics. Make sure that they align with your priorities. If you want to study music after school and that's really all you want to do, then jam packing Classes. That won't make it so that you can practice is maybe not the best idea, so make sure that you have those classes in alignment with your priorities.
Speaker 1:
And the last one give yourself some grace. You are doing this for the first time. If you mess up, or if maybe something happens that you didn't realize that was gonna happen, or Something like that, that is fine. Okay, it is fine, and that is it for today. Thank you so much for listening and hanging out with me today. I am so grateful. If you like what you heard and you don't want to miss the next episodes, because they are only gonna get better From here, make sure that you hit that subscribe button and I cannot wait to see you in the next episode. Bye.
