elise blatchford elise blatchford

My first seven jobs

Talking to some of my recent graduates, I surprised them by speaking of my early work experience. Very few professional musicians have only had music-related jobs! This meme has been going around – I highly recommend that you search for other articles about someone’s first seven jobs. The author Po Bronson also wrote a wonderful book called What Should I Do With My Life? and it’s essentially just short essays about different people doing their jobs. I love this book.

1. File clerk for Allstate Insurance. I got my first job when I was fifteen, working for the Allstate Insurance agent in my small California town – first just filing paperwork for two hours after school. I worked for that office until I was in college and eventually learned the computer system and started handling phone calls and entering payments. The office ended up hiring my brother, too. The two of us would cover the office full-time in the summers when the agent went on vacation.

What I learned: nobody calls their insurance agent when they’re happy about something.

2. Student assistant in the Oberlin alumni office. My basic office skills followed me to the Oberlin College Alumni Association, which was an office just across the square from the music conservatory. I worked a couple of hours a day doing data entry for them.

3. RA. I became a resident assistant for the Women’s and Transgender Collective for my last two years at Oberlin College. It was a great job – I really cared about the people around me. We planned feminist educational events and it was the first time I started learning about transgender issues and advocacy. This job helped me to stay connected with human beings while I was practicing the flute five hours a day.

4. Camp flute teacher. In 2003, I was hired to teach flute at Cazadero Performing Arts Camp, which is this beautiful camp near my hometown in the northern California redwood forest. I was still a student at Oberlin. Suddenly I was in charge of twenty flute players at a time, a new group arriving every two weeks, for the whole summer. I kept this job, on and off, until 2009, and I loved it. So much of my formative music teaching experience came from this place: how to deal with wide arrays of abilities, teaching individuals and groups, solving problems quickly, and somehow keeping it fun.

5. Community service coordinator. The San Francisco Conservatory of Music had an amazing program that sent students into San Francisco to provide free performances in unlikely places. Think violin duets in a soup kitchen during lunch hour. I was the student coordinator for the program. About eighty students participated each year. It was actually really fun to call up nonprofits and offer them free music visitations.

6. Assistant to the principal of a private school. Post-graduation, I still needed a stable job. I had so much office experience by this point (I’m very thankful for the campus jobs I held) that I was able to find a very good full-time job for my first year out of college. This assistant position even had health insurance and a 401K match. I answered the phone, planned meetings, managed the principal’s schedule, made travel arrangements for her, and kept track of her expense account. It probably could have been a satisfying permanent position if I had wanted it. I only stayed for about nine months, though, before leaving town for better playing opportunities.

7. Full-time flutist. Yes, here we are! Playing and teaching the flute have supported me since that last job. I’ve been very lucky to get to do what I do, but it was also a conscious risk to take. I worried about money a lot. Gigs came and went. I took a lot of auditions and most resulted in rejection. There were great performances and horrible ones. Overall, I’m happy where I am, while being thankful for my past job experiences.

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elise blatchford elise blatchford

Why failure is as important as success

Resilience and inherent intelligence are, to me, the greatest indicators of future success for a classical musician. Success is relative, though - it could mean a “real job” like in an orchestra or higher education, it could mean teaching music privately or in schools, it could mean a combination of many things to pay the bills. Success is always going to mean different things to different people, at different times of their lives.

I failed at this.

I failed at this.

Resilience and inherent intelligence are, to me, the greatest indicators of future success for a classical musician. Success is relative, though - it could mean a “real job” like in an orchestra or higher education, it could mean teaching music privately or in schools, it could mean a combination of many things to pay the bills. Success is always going to mean different things to different people, at different times of their lives.

Young musicians with a ton of natural talent and early success have wonderful opportunities and tend to get ahead of their peers very quickly: they have important developmental experiences at an early age and acquire confidence in their abilities. Yet these same musicians are more likely to fall away and quit as soon as things get choppy and difficult. Their love for the art has not been tested over and over by rejection, as in some of their peers who are slower to develop. The supremely talented are exceptionally fearful of rejection because they rarely experience it in their resilient teens and twenties. In this way, they are actually at a particular disadvantage.

This is difficult to see from the perspective of a student who is always second best, always runner-up, fifth chair, or passed over. It can be very frustrating when your best is only mid-level. Some of these students will quit music, and that is only natural and right. If you can’t stand the heat, get out of the kitchen. But many of these mid-level musicians will persist, will continue to practice, will continue to be curious and problem-solve. These musicians become the hardest workers, the best colleagues, the thoughtful artists. They know the why’s and the how’s of what they do. They become great teachers and solid performers.

Of course, it bears mentioning that there is nothing wrong with quitting. If you ask enough professional musicians, many of them will tell you about how they either thought about quitting or actually did quit and came back to the craft later. There is nothing wrong with walking away from this line of work. It is difficult, the practicing never ends, it swallows your nights and weekends, it pays poorly, it makes us physically and mentally uncomfortable. Personally, if I see that a student is far away from the skill or talent level needed for a professional career, I steer them away from music over a series of frank conversations. Hard work can’t overcome every talent deficit.

But hardworking musicians who have faced rejection are actually the ideal people to be chasing this career. Keep chasing, keep working, keep dreaming. Be strong.

 

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