How To Create Your Balance Between School and Music School Auditions

Who's the auditioner's best friend? TIME MANAGEMENT. Especially when we are auditioning for music schools, setting boundaries with our academics can be the key to focusing on our auditions and making a lasting impression.

In this episode, we dive right into three steps to set boundaries with school so that you can focus on applying and auditioning for music school. Ready to thrive in the audition process? Let's dive in.

This episode is also available as a blog post. Click here to read.

Here's how to make time for you during your auditions. Check it out!

Wanna learn more about auditioning in a fun and easy way? Get your own audition playlist! Click here.

Your Audition Guidebook? Click here for it!

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Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

When I was in ninth grade, I was so focused on academics that I had no time for Oboe. I thought that it would be impressive to sign up for every music class under the sun. So that is exactly what I did. I signed up for band, marching band, orchestra, choir, jazz band and the musical, and that with that came so many different events and places I needed to be. For instance, I had to beat all the football games for marching band, so that was every Friday night, and I also chose harder academic courses and in the end I had absolutely no time to practice Oboe. Flash forward to 12th grade, I had not only enough time to practice, but also enough time to apply, prepare my auditions, do trial lessons and audition for 12 music schools in three different countries. How I set boundaries, and so can you.

Speaker 1: 0:52

Hello and welcome to the Confident Musicianing Podcast. I'm your host, eleanor, and after countless practice sessions, a ton of Bergenreeds 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. Hey there and welcome. Our relationship with school and academics might be kind of interesting. Mine certainly was not very healthy when I was in ninth grade and when we are also applying for music school, we need a lot of extra time to say, fill out the application, write essays and our personal statements, practice for auditions, for preliminary auditions, go to the in-person audition and so much more. It is a whole lot. So today we are going to chat about setting boundaries with school so that we can practice and apply for music school.

Speaker 1: 2:04

The first thing that we need to consider is what is the nature of your music school auditions, and to figure that out we got to do some research. For instance, are you going to be doing a lot of different auditions? I did 12 auditions in three different countries. That was a lot of work. Not only was it 12 different schools, but it was also three different countries, which meant each country had its own timeline, its own deadlines, the things that they needed from me. Like all of these different things, they had different setups and processes, so I had to do three of those. It took a bunch of time. But let's say you are only applying for four music schools and they're all in your home country and that's going to take a different amount of time than say what I did. Or maybe you're doing something completely different. Or maybe you are applying for music school but you're also planning on doing a double major with biology or something like that. All of those things are very different.

Speaker 1: 3:04

So knowing the nature of your auditions, what you plan to do, can be really helpful for saying, huh, what do you do? I think I'm going to be. Now it's hard to completely know how much work there's going to be, and that is completely okay. I mean, you don't know the future, neither do I, but making a guesstimate can be a good first step. Some ways to help you is asking a teacher. If you ask your private teacher, they know you better, they know you and they know what you want to do and your instrument and all of these things, and they can help guide you to be like okay, you know this is going to take this amount of time, or this is going to take this amount of time, or that's a good idea, or maybe that's not such a good idea.

Speaker 1: 3:49

You can also ask other students. You can ask students in your school, maybe other people who want to do music. You can also ask people who have graduated from your school and who have already gone through the audition process for music school and you can say, hey, how much time did it take you? What do you wish you had done differently? All of these things like, just chat with them. Another thing you can do is ask the students who are already at the schools that you want to apply to. They have already gone through this process, especially if, say, they play the same instrument as you, and that can be really insightful. A way that you can get in touch with these students is through trial lessons, so you can have a trial lesson with the teacher and then you can say, hey, can you put me in touch with some students? Or you could just email the teacher as well. If you don't want to go through the trial lessons and say, hey, can you put me in touch with some of the students, but if you want to go through trial lessons, which I completely recommend, trial lessons are absolutely amazing.

Speaker 1: 4:49

Episode 14, which is like the episode before this one, is all about trial lessons. It is called trial lessons coming up. Here's how to prepare for them, and it takes you from you having the lesson on the calendar but you don't really know how to prepare for it to having an amazing trial lesson and making genuine connections. So make sure to go check that out. That link is in the show notes. So talking to students who are already at the school is a great way to figure that out. And again, you don't have to know exactly everything about your workload.

Speaker 1: 5:24

When I first brainstormed I had 20 schools that I wanted to apply to and I helped kind of whittle that down to a mere 12. But it was really really helpful to do that and it was okay because I didn't completely know what my next year was going to be. But I did put in the research and I had kind of a basic idea of what I was getting myself into. So the next step after doing your research is understanding your priorities around music school. So obviously your thing for this year is getting into music school. It is your chance, it is your shot, it is amazing and I am so excited for you.

Speaker 1: 6:06

But we need to think about, with the understanding of the nature of your auditions, how do you want school to fit around that, for instance, maybe you really want to put in your music classes. Or maybe you like academics. Maybe you're doing like a double major or a minor in something else that is not music and you want to have your academic classes. Or maybe you also value your time, like your time. Maybe you want to say to yourself okay, you know, I know that this is going to be a lot this year and I do want to prioritize me and my downtime and my hobbies. That is another way to think about it. And if you want to make time for you which I completely recommend that's also in another podcast episode, episode 13, how to make time for you while preparing for auditions, that one's a great one. It is full of different ways to make time for you and to make sure that you have your free time, have your downtime in the busyness of preparing for auditions. So that will also be linked in the show notes. Go check that out as well.

Speaker 1: 7:13

So when you think about your priorities for instance, I want to have music classes, or I want to have at least a few harder academic classes, because I really like that and that makes me excited Just think about your priorities and I invite you to just grab a notebook, grab a pen, you know piece of paper, and just write down your priorities and reflect on them. What do you think about these priorities? Do they reflect you? Okay, and it's okay if those priorities change. I know that my priorities change throughout the year as well, so it is absolutely fine Now thinking about those priorities. That's what you are going to use to set your boundaries. So if you say, okay, music is the most important thing at the moment in terms of getting into music school and I do want to have a few academic challenging classes, but I'm not going to let those academic challenging classes interfere with my time for music school, or you could say, oh, I'm only applying to three music schools and you know, my teacher said that it's probably not going to be as much work as, say, applying to 10 or something like that. And maybe you're thinking, okay, I have more time to do some academics, then that's perfectly fine as well. Or if you say I'm doing a double major where I'm doing music and biology, I need to have some biology courses in my school year for this year. That is also something to remember. So use that to kind of set your boundaries.

Speaker 1: 8:42

Now step three, after you have your priorities, is picking your classes accordingly. If you want to have a lighter load, to focus on uni auditions, take your classes accordingly. See that's how it works. So, do you wanna have challenging classes? Do you wanna have, maybe, fun classes? Are you doing a double major? All of these things you need to think about, especially the cost versus benefit. So when you are coming up with your classes, you are choosing your classes, think about the cost, think about the benefit. So, for instance, if you are applying to, let's say, 12 music schools and your teacher said this is gonna be very time consuming, but I think you can do it, and let's say, some of those schools are kind of out of reach, but you're really, really, really, you really wanna get into them, and your teacher's like, yes, that's gonna be a challenge, but you know you're gonna make it happen, like we're gonna work through it, it's gonna be great. Then you look at your transcript and you see, okay, I've booked myself four AP classes, which is advanced placement, tons of different hard classes. Does this check out? And maybe the reason why you booked those classes was maybe your friends were in those classes, or maybe not necessarily for a reason that balances the cost. So think about the cost versus benefit of your classes. If you have, say, a class that is challenging but you really enjoy it and you're like you know what, I can do this, this is something that I love, this is something I'm gonna get a kick out of, I really like this, you know subject or whatever it is, then that also changes the cost versus benefit. So picking classes accordingly while thinking about that.

Speaker 1: 10:28

So let's maybe talk about my senior year, my 12th grade year. While I was doing auditions Now, I applied for 12 different music schools in three different countries, so I had to make sure that my class academic load balanced that. So here are the classes that I took in 12th grade Advanced placement, german. Advanced placement, english language. A sophomore. So a 10th grade social studies course, but that's a whole different story Latin one, and then I did a project where I played oboe in recitals for the community and I got credit for that. So basically it was a class for practicing and performing, which was perfect for me. Now you might be saying, eleanor, there are two advanced placement courses and you did 12 schools. What is what are you talking about? What's going on there? Now?

Speaker 1: 11:17

For me, ap German and advanced placement German was an amazing course. I loved it because I am very conversationally comfortable in German and I was also the only student in that course, so it was very focused on kind of what I wanted to do. We learned the grammar, we learned the things we were supposed to do, but the teacher was like, okay, what topics do you want to cover? So like we can learn this grammar, but in the context of an orchestra or something like that, and it was really really really helpful and interesting for me. So that class, even though it was advanced placement, it was so much fun and I loved it. So even though it had advanced placement on the title, it was just fun for me.

Speaker 1: 11:59

The next course, advanced placement, english. I mean that was harder. That was that took them. Like out of all the classes that I took, that probably took the most time academically, but it was just really fun. I really enjoyed it as well and it made school really interesting. Now, the history course and the Latin course were both very easy classes. I did not have to study for them like basically at all. So those were really easy and they just went on my transcript and I focused on auditions. And then the one with the music. That was also extremely helpful because I just got credit to practice, which was really helpful as well. So that was my high school senior class load very different from my ninth grade class load, and but that really helped me focus on uni auditions and kind of keep that up.

Speaker 1: 12:50

So for you it might look absolutely completely different. So you need to understand your priorities. You need to understand how much work you're getting yourself into and pick classes accordingly. Really, think about it. You know, as I have struggled and worked through different auditions and audition seasons, I have tested out and collected strategies for all aspects of the auditioning process Not just working, but also you know the before, preparing to the middle, to the after of the audition process, and this is to go in a special guidebook for you and the link all about this is in the show notes. So go check that out Now.

Speaker 1: 13:27

The last thing I want to leave with you is that you are doing this for the first time. You will make mistakes, you will learn, you will learn and grow. This is such an exciting time for you and I am so excited for you seriously, but if you maybe go in the middle of the year and you're like actually those things that I was thinking about, the research that I did, the priorities that I set they don't really reflect me. Now, actually I want to do this, or actually I want to do that, or maybe I didn't consider this. That's perfectly fine, because you know, this is the first time you are doing this. You will learn, you will figure things out. So, if that happens, that is perfectly fine. Okay, you got this. Remember to give yourself grace and just keep going, because you've got this and I believe in you. You know I believe in you. This is an amazing time applying for university and music school, so I wish you all the best and I hope that you have fun, because it's a fun time. It's an exciting time. All right, that's about it for this episode. Thank you so much for listening.

Speaker 1: 14:32

As always, all the stuff to do with this episode will be linked in the show notes from the blog post that goes to this episode, to the link about the audition playlist Make sure you go check that out To the link for episode 13 about making time for you while preparing for auditions. And episode 14 about preparing for trial lessons. And, last but definitely not least, the link about your audition guide. Make a habit of doing yourself a favor and looking at these show notes because, let's be honest, there's some good stuff in there. If you want to show your love and support for the Confident Musicianing podcast, make sure you give it a follow. And if you are preparing for auditions or starting the whole university auditioning process, I wish you the best of luck. It is a great ride and I'm so excited for you. All right, I will see you next time. Bye-bye.