A Lone Reed

Yep, another You've Got Mail reference. It was my favorite movie for many years...
I'm beginning to feel all alone as a Vocal Music Ed major at Concordia. I just feel like my ideas about what I'd like to do as a choir director someday are very different from my peers. Last weekend I was at an ACDA convention, and I felt like no matter what I said, I was wrong. And it would feel better if other people thought I was wrong and had differing opinions among themselves. But it was generally a shared opinion of everyone around me versus my opinion.
I've always felt insecure as a music major in the first place. I wasn't the uber-music person in high school like most music majors are. I was the well-rounded student. I don't have many of the experiences that most music majors have had, so I feel like I'm always trying to catch up to them. So when it's everyone else's opinion versus mine, I start to wonder if I'm even worthy of being a music major.
And then I remember the final choir director I had in high school, the one who's still at my high school, and I feel validated again. She who came out of St. Olaf's music program, which isn't all that different from Concordia's, and came out not all that different from me in her musical tastes and interests. In fact, it's very possible that some of her musical tastes rubbed off on me in my one year in her classroom. A place where there exists an equal level of respect for historical choral pieces, traditional-sounding choral pieces, Broadway music, and choral arrangements of pop pieces. And that's how I feel. I think that all types of music deserve some level of respect as music, and different types of music reach different types of people, performers and audience members alike. So seeing my high school choir director at convention last weekend, even though it was for only about 5 minutes, may have been my highlight of the entire convention, because in those 5 minutes I was validated. Which I need sometimes. And really needed last weekend. It was my reminder that there are others like me in the world. There are others who appreciate a wide variety of music and believe that a wide variety of music should be taught. I've always thought that there must be more of me among Concordia's music majors, but last weekend it seemed that I was the lone reed - the only one who felt the way I did, who felt like Concordia can be a school of music snobs at times.
But even if I'm a lone reed at Concordia, I'm not a lone reed in the choral world. Because I can look at my high school choir director and see a young woman who runs a very successful choral program using many of the same beliefs about music that I myself hold. So I can look at evidence that just because my musical views are different than those of my peers, it doesn't mean I'm going to fail. I can still succeed. Because there's someone out there already who has.