Hello all—
I hope you enjoyed the time off from class today, as well as your feathers.
If you remember, last week we had intended to talk about just what the Liberal Arts are, what a liberal arts education might entail, how a professional degree is a bit different from a liberal arts degree, and how the liberal arts and a professional music degree might intersect. Happily, your ME projects were so entertaining that we ran out of time…
Well, in the true spirit of both the liberal arts and the figure-it-out-yourself skills needed by a professional musician, I’m going to send you out to find this all out for yourselves and report back. Head over to Wikipedia and peruse the articles on “liberal arts,” “bachelor of music,” and any other topics that seem relevant to the cause. Then think about the following: You all attend what is most decidedly a liberal arts college. As Dexter himself said, while you are here you are expected to learn how to “see clearly, decide wisely, and act justly.” You are all also pursuing a professional degree of some sort—an education that values skill and talent as much as thought and reason. If you don’t apply yourself to the practice room while you’re here, you won’t be very employable once you leave (and that includes the education and therapy majors just as much as the performance ones.)
For your blog this week, we’d like you to discuss these issues. What did you learn from the Wikipedia entries that might seem interesting or relevant to your current situation? How might you marry the concepts of a liberal arts education with your professional pursuits? What could a professional musician possibly get out of taking a class on, say, Botany? Or the French Revolution? Or Ancient Greek Philosophy? Or any of the other Liberal Arts Courses that we offer here? (You might want to peruse the current Converse Academic Catalogue for ideas. You can link to it from the Converse homepage.) And, finally, did you take anything away from Convocation today that might resound off of these themes?
Incidentally, we do offer a liberal art-based, non-professional music degree here—the Bachelor of Arts in Music. If anyone ever wants to come talk to me about it, just give me a holler.
Oh, and Lainie, I know, I know. Just adapt the blog assignment to your own pursuits, and don’t forget that a BFA is sort of a liberal arts/professional hybrid.
As always, the blog is due by 11:00 pm on Friday night (September 18). I’d like to add a little something, though. Sometime between Friday night and next Tuesday’s SSS class (September 22), please go check out some of your classmates’ class blogs (last week's or this week's), and leave comments on at least four of them. Your comments should be both substantial (not just “Hey girl! Great blog! Bye!”) and polite. No heckling. Unless, of course, you want to add the sound of a million marbles rolling towards the stage and a few alarm clocks…
And, for those of you who already feel like you’re drowning in a sea of impossible schedules, we’ll be discussing Time Management in all of its glory next week. Whee!
