Career anxiety

So firstly I hope this is in the right spot. If not my apologies!

I always tell my students to do what you do with pride and excellence and the right people will always notice. Well this has come full circle back on me. Apparently at our last home game a couple weeks ago there was a talent scout looking for football players for a University for next year. As it so happens they need a Symphonic and Marching Band Director for next year because theirs apparently quit recently. So this year they don’t even have a director for their marching band and most of their season has been suspended. Well talent recruiter spoke to our football coach and got my information and forwarded it to their HR department, who contacted me the Monday after.

Spoke to the recruiter about the position and what not. I’d be over their symphonic band and marching band which at a university level is a lot. But I’d also be teaching music majors and probably doing private lessons if possible. I could also transfer my PhD to them and complete at a much reduced cost.

I’m filled with anxiety over the whole thing. I love my students and where I’m at, but this is such a great opportunity. I mean the money and PhD alone are worth it in my opinion. But still, it’s a humongous decision. So their marching band hasn’t competed in any collegiate competitions in TEN YEARS. And they’ve gone through five people in this spot in the same amount of time. Which is crazy to me but none of them from what I could tell was the Uni’s doings: one guy got arrested for killing his ex wife, one guy was killed in a car accident, the one lady moved to Florida, one guy his wife was relocated to Germany So he had to go too and this last one just up and quit because of the covid.

Pros:

• The money (it’s nearly double what I’m currently getting)
• The tuition assistance for my PhD
• I’d be surrounded by my peers and be in an environment with not only other music professors, but music major students
• My fiancé could finish his degree at a similar reduced price to mine
• They’re super supportive of LGBT+
  
• They have FANTASTIC music, arts, and theater programs

Cons:

• It’s 45-50 mins away which is a little longer than my current commute and in the winter time would be little longer
• The Uni itself is great but their marching band program has definitely suffered
• Kinda hate being the new kid on the block all over again
• Their marching band currently has 67 members and ohhhh boy is it rough. They do have solid support staff but without solid leadership they’ve floundered
• Going to have to re-establish myself and figure out where my boundaries of what I can and can’t do are
• I have to finish my degree on time (no semesters or anything off) or I’d loose my job

It’s a lot to think about. And honestly I really don’t even see my family as it is so adding extra time to my commute is going to trim a little off that. They do have a decent football program and their athletics director seems great (he did the interview along with the hr rep). It’s not truly a department head position, but the other music professors do look to this person for leadership.

I mean don’t get me wrong I love my students and tolerate most of my coworkers but it would be so nice to be around other music teachers and musicians. They have a faculty-led string ensemble, there’s brass choir, there’s percussion ensemble. Looking at the list there’s a dozen music ensembles that they offer. String quartets, brass quarters, gospel choir, there’s a jazz big band, etc.

But there’s going to be so much uphill battle with the bands. The athletics director showed me a video of their marching band from this year and y’all let me tell youuuuuuuu. I’m not going to say they suck, but they’re in-step and formation challenged. They have a really solid drum line, okay front percussion. Their brass is really solid and I couldn’t hear the woodwinds. But marching?? They’re marching challenged. Which is an essential part of being a marching band.

So yeah. Heard from the recruiter yesterday it’s mine if I want it. Only question is, do I want it?

 

From what I can tell the workload might be a little increased, with private lessons and stuff, but it should be manageable. I was trying to work out the schedule and it seems the time commitment seems roughly similar. Rather than having idle time in the afternoons it would be doing other duties. I mean right now I usually have idle time after school from when school lets out to when practice starts. I don’t go home now during that time frame. The commute would add a bit to it. Plus away games I don’t know if they expect the band to go to away games or not.

Size wise that area is a little more metro little more built up. It’s a Uni town and is of course a bit more vibrant and alive. Moving isn’t the best option I don’t think. We’d have to do something with the house. We own it right because his great aunt/uncle left it to him when they passed and we’ve put a considerable amount of money into fixing/upgrading things.

My fiancé is a Sergeant with the Sheriff’s office and working on a bachelors in forensic science. From what I read from the 110 page packet they sent me so my tuition as the employee would be greatly reduced. I’d basically just be paying for textbooks, technology, etc stuff like that. He wouldn’t have to work for the Uni and his tuition would be cut in roughly half.

And you know filling shoes is exactly the situation I had when I first got here to my current school. That first season was absolutely miserable. It was a constant tension between myself and the students, the staff and students, the parents and myself, and of course the administration. And you’re right, in this situation I can blaze my own trail with probably little to no resistance. All they’ve known for the last decade is chaos, disorder, and lack of discipline. Honestly probably just having them show up to the first home game as a well disciplined unit marching nice and neat that alone would probably keep everyone out of it. I know it’s embarrassing as all get out seeing them come into a home game looking like a gaggle of geese rather than a marching band. Trust me...I saw the game footage from the last home game. It was... rough.

But it also means I have to bring it and bring it hard and fast. I’m thinking about probably at least 3 weeks of band camp just to get them up to par. Which is up to a level that meets my expectations. Their staff is ok. I mean they’re not terrible and absolutely do have a lot of potential. But without any sort of solid leadership they don’t exactly mesh together. And their percussion instructor has a wicked temper. That was also on that video I saw.

So the amount of work required is monumental.

 

I thought about something else too. At the Uni level they actually actively recruit for next year. So I’m probably going to have to take an active role in that so I can build the program with the top notch.

Full disclosure but I took a personal day for tomorrow so I can go see the camps. Meet people, etc. I’ll let you know how it goes.

 

My fiancé and I have been talking about it this afternoon. And I love him to death, but he ain’t got to be right all the freaking time AND call me out about it! We were fixing dinner talking about it and stuff. I made the comment that I didn’t know if it was right to do. Like if I could leap out and do it. And he goes “Babe would you stop already? Your heart has already accepted it. If it were up to your heart, you’d have already been done it. Right now we’re just waiting for your mind to crunch the numbers and catch up. Tomorrow you going to be looking for stuff that’s wrong, stuff to give you a reason to turn them down. Us? Me you and [my son]? We’re going to be fine either way. We’re gonna work it out like we always do. But you? I know you. You’ll regret this for the rest of your life if you don’t accept it and don’t have some amazing reasons why not.”

I hate admitting that he’s right. Leaves a foul taste in my mouth lol. But I am glad he’s going with tomorrow. Because I’m going to see stuff as red flag warning bells alarm going off. But he’ll see a more neutral version of it. As he says, he’ll balance my crazy.

 

It does! But I’m still trying to nitpick the whole thing and shoot holes in it.

 

It’s ALOT of hard work! So really there’s three starting points: brand new programs, well established programs in good health, and established programs that aren’t in good health. All three are going to have their own unique set of challenges. With a brand new program you’re free to establish everything and build from a blank slate. But you also doing have any pre-established leadership to help. So it’s a lot in you.

With an established program in good health you’re faced with the challenge of integrating your new with their old. You also have to not only step up to their established precedence, but ideally raise that bar. And while you’ll have established leadership, you have to put in the work to turn them towards you and get them on your side.

In a situation like this where the program is established but not in good health, it too has its own challenges. While I can swoop in and establish order and discipline and try to bring back some traditions and bring in my own, where I’m going to struggle is with laziness and nasty attitudes. When the laziness and rotten attitude has been allowed to fester, it’s hard to get rid of it. Sometimes you have to purge and membership drops but you’re keeping the best ones. I’d rather March 5 fantastic ones than 500 crappy ones.

I’ve been doing my research. I found out that on the University’s online library they have a lot of videos from the marching band from over the years. They have some sporadic recordings/video from the 80s/90s but then from 2002 they have a video from each year. And let me tell you, they used to be really really phenomenal. The downhill I would call it would be the 2007 season. They got a new band director and it seemed like he wanted to throw everything before him completely out the window.

Instead of the uniforms that they had been using, he had them in like track jackets and jeans. And honestly that could be attributed to a lot of things that weren’t directly his fault. Maybe they didn’t have enough to March the uniforms for everyone or they needed to refresh them. (This is supported by other things I found). But he also did away with from what I could tell most of the established traditions of the band. He completely changed their marching style going from a roll step to a high step (considerably harder).

2010-current... just bad. Just bad. The band director in 2010 decided to reorder the same uniforms assumingly because they needed more to march those uniforms. Well the problem with that (and why you generally want to refresh the entire fleet at once) is that the old uniforms still look good. Until you stand them next to brand new uniforms of the same design. Colors have faded, buttons have started to sag, stitch work isn’t as great, etc. For me, that’s the stuff I notice and stuff that irritates the living bajeezus out of me.

The band director after this completely did away with the uniforms and had them in these jogging suit looking things. Okay solution but in my honest opinion lazy. To me the uniform is something that you should take pride in. Take pride that you’ve earned the right to wear this uniform. You’ve earned this. Taking pride in yourself, in your uniform fuels the greater success. It constantly pushes for a higher level of excellence.

I also got my hands on the budget and gross spending reports from 2006 to last year from the alumni association. So looping back to both uniform issues. Based on the budget/spending, it would have been entirely feasible for all three directors to replace all of the uniforms completely, each time. Which to me they’re minor details, but it speaks to the level that has been tolerated. The ensemble is a reflection of its conductor/director, but it’s also a spotlight on them. Them going out in those new/old mismatched uniforms would not have flown with me. The jogging suits looked sloppy and lazy. The out of step marching made me want to cry. None of that would I have tolerated and allowed to march. Why? Because they’re not going to go out there and embarrass not only themselves but me.

Sorry for the book! I just have so much to think about with this whole thing.

 

I wanted to update y’all like I said I would. We haven’t been home long but I’ve been absolutely buzzing since we left. Y’all their campus is just absolutely gorgeous. It was so breath taking beautiful. The auditorium was amazing. When we got to the auditorium on the tour there was a brass quintet in there practicing and they sounded really great. Then you go into the performing arts center proper of you go to like the left it has dance/theater/etc. But if you turn to the right there’s massive double doors it has “[Guys name] Center of Musical Excellence”. You open these doors and you’re immediately hit with the sounds of people practicing and everything.

You go in and it’s like this long hallway. Practice rooms on either side — they have 32 total, 16 upstairs and 16 downstairs. All the ones downstairs had in there practicing. It made my heart so happy with so many musicians in there talking their craft seriously and trying to hone it to perfection. Then you go all the way to the end of the hallway and it’s a T you can go either way. If you go to the left it goes to the choir room and the elevator upstairs. You go to the right there’s the bands locker room, and the band room.

Y’all. The band room is so freaking big. I could easily fit my entire 500 member band into this room no problem and still have some extra left over. They had trophies in cases, and banners hanging from the ceiling rafters. But you could tell it ain’t really used like that. So I asked where does the band practice?? So he takes me up stairs to this dingy little classroom which is obvious where they practice. It broke my heart!! Why would you put them in an awful classroom that smells like chalk and cheap cologne when you have this beautiful and amazing sound quality room right downstairs!? The person who was showing us around said that’s just the way the most recent band directors had wanted it.

We did get to see the marching band in rehearsal. It was...something. That’s really about all I can say. And like it wasn’t even really that bad from a music stand point. Definitely some tweaking and adjusting the balance and stuff, but the musicianship is definitely there. That marching though?? Oh boy. Don’t even get me started on the color guard!! That part was painful to watch. I didn’t even realize it but I had started to walk out on that field and flag the drum major to cut off and ask them what their issue was. My fiancé grabbed me by the belt of my pants to stop me.

My heart is doing five miles a minute screaming “you know you want this”. My brain is trying to keep up “no heart calm down!” I really didn’t even want to leave to come home (I wanted to explore but we really didn’t have time). If I do this... the first freaking thing I’m doing is moving the band back into the band room. The second thing I’m doing is getting rid of those horrible jogging suit things. They look even worse in person. And the third thing ima do is that one percussionist who had those obnoxiously outrageously colored sticks I’m going to burn them.

 

True that homie. This really isn’ta profession that you fall into and accidentally survive in. You have to be passionate enough to deal with all of the red tape and insanity that comes with it. There is never a dull moment in the life of a band director!

And you right... the heart wants what the heart wants.

 

I think ultimately I’d regret it if I didn’t have a good reason. Like off something was fishy or something.

 

So I. I did a thing today. I called HR and accepted the position. They want me to come up next week to sign paperwork so ima do that. I haven’t told anyone at my school except my VP. My stomach has been doing back flips all afternoon.

 

Here, check this out!
https://www.musicnotes.com/now/tips/how-to-read-sheet-music/