#birthday present to myself will be ill have to start repaying those loans rip

[sibyl-of-space]

grad school feels below readmore, last semester is coming up

I have an advising session tomorrow, and registration opens next week, for my last semester here. Holy fucking hell that went by fast. Almost 2 years already. Gonna graduate and have a Master’s in music technology and composition. That’s actually not something I think I saw myself doing when I graduated undergrad ~6 years ago... I was so done with school at the time, and had done such a shit job networking because I was treating it like high school and just trying to Get Good Grades, that my bachelor’s in music felt like a paperweight. A paperweight that I thoroughly enjoyed the studies it took to obtain, but a paperweight nevertheless.

And now a bitch (almost) has a master’s. I mean still, after all this, a paper that says you have a degree is just a paper - but I’ve worked my ass off and learned so much these past 2 years. I haven’t done the internships etc that you’re “supposed” to do, but I have made a lot of friends, some of whom I am sure to continue collaborating with when I graduate, and I think I’ve met at least a couple teachers who I might be able to keep in touch with too. My lesson teacher in particular. And I’ve gotten the #1 thing I wanted which was a better grasp on what tools are available to me to create music and sounds, and a better ear to figure out what sounds I like and how to make them. I’ve become a MEASURABLY better artist.

So now.... really the question is, how do I get the most out of one final semester here? I absolutely cannot do another 17-unit semester like I’m doing now, because I need to spend a LOT of time OUTSIDE of school preparing to transition into The Real World (TM). In order to do that I need time that I do NOT have right now drowning in this many units. But I don’t want to take the bare minimum units and coast, either -- I KNOW I’ll regret that. It’s about finding the classes that really matter to me and being completely certain that I am getting the skills I want from my education.

(I think I’ve done a really good job of that so far. It required more or less fistfighting my advisor on certain topics, but I know myself well enough that I was able to make what - in retrospect - were definitely the correct decisions for me. There is one last thing I want to fistfight my advisor about tomorrow, and I have a backup plan for if I lose that battle, but I will not go down without a fight.)

I still feel nervous about how I’ve continued to have such a Jack Of All Trades approach - I've bounced between being obsessed with recording and being obsessed with sound design and being obsessed with scripting/implementation and being obsessed with arrangement and being obsessed with composing. Even took a stint in being obsessed with early 20th century French newspaper articles. But finally thanks to my lesson teacher (and my Unity/C# teacher) I feel like I have met a few people who see my approach to things as a strength and not a weakness, and I really hope I can find a way forward through them.

Going to be very scary facing that job market with not one but two music degrees though. Oh well yolo