Keepingon

The tenth grader couldn’t wait for the bell to ring, so he could share the good news with his school counselor.  “I know what I want to do with my life” he said, bursting through the door with a sense of energy and purpose few fifteen-year-old boys had for anything but football and Farrah Fawcett Majors.  “I want to go to college and become a disc jockey.”

As a fellow counselor, I’d like to blame what happened next on the fact that the student didn’t have an appointment, didn’t wait to be announced by a secretary, and the truth that tenth graders don’t typically see their school counselors, at least not on a voluntary basis.  Despite all that, I still have to say, this counselor could have done better.

“That shows what you know.  You don’t have to go to college to become a disc jockey, and in your case, that’s a good thing, because you aren’t college material.”

It was then the student showed an attribute I admired in him greatly when we met later on—the tendency to dig in his heels when someone told him what he couldn’t do.  He finished high school, and was accepted by a state university, where, it’s true, he didn’t study disc jockeying, but became a music education major.  He returned to his rural hometown to become the high school band director, starting a DJing business on the side, and going to graduate school at night.  His former high school counselor—now his colleague—finally retired, which is where graduate school came in handy.

You see, he earned his master’s degree in school counseling, and took his counselor’s place, in the very same office.

She loved classical music, a joy she inherited from her parents.  Longing to play the clarinet, she was crestfallen to discover another student was using the school’s lone instrument.  When she found out the other student was already a flute player, she gently leaned on them to turn the clarinet in, so he could get started with pursuing her passion.

The clarinet finally became available, and there was no turning back.  She played night and day, performed in orchestras and small ensembles, and even made her own arrangements of music she loved.  When college came around, there was no question she would major in music performance, and was destined for graduate school in either performance or conducting.

And then her parents stepped in.  It’s great you love music as much as we do, they said, but music isn’t a way to make a living.  You’re going to law school.

As good as she was at music, she knew the price, both fiscally and emotionally, of bucking her parents.  So she went to law school—one of the country’s most prestigious in fact—and never studied, choosing to use her time to keep playing, thinking they’d throw her out.  Trouble was, she had talent for the law, so everything she only casually listened to in class was enough for her to earn a law degree and pass the bar with room to spare.

A few years after landing a job at a prestigious law firm, both she and her employer came to a mutual understanding—law was not her calling.  She took her earnings, bought a magnificent new clarinet, and paid her own way through school, earning a Masters in conducting.  She went on to found a summer festival and an opera company, and turned a non-tenured track conductor position into a full-fledged faculty slot.

Hearts don’t rebel.  They persist.

Vitriol

A subway platform temper tantrum
Calls for distance
Self-care of the highest order
Perhaps a trigger text
To 911.

But hissy fits
With microphones
Are calculated
The product
Worked backwards
From an end game.

Bend if you must
But only do so
Once you cogitate
On their finish line.

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