I always get a lot of different reactions when I tell people that I am a vocal performance major. There's always the standard "oh, that's cool!" reaction, lots of people who don't exactly know what my major actually is (it's all about learning how to correctly sing and perform more "classical" music), people who think I'm aiming to sing at the Met or on Broadway (which I am not), and unfortunately people who think that my major isn't a "real major." But guess what, my major is just as legitimate as any other major and I work just as hard, if not harder than a lot of non-music majors.
For one, I didn't just have to apply to schools, I had to audition too. It doesn't matter what my grades were, how good of an entrance essay I wrote, or how high my SAT scores were (and for your information, music majors need to have a higher average GPA and test scores to get into music school than the average major because they need to prove that they can excel academically and musically), I also had to perform well enough to get into music school. Auditions can be terrifying as every judge is expecting something different from you, auditions are never consistent, and the whole performing industry in general is based on opinions and never as clear cut as a test score. So if you see a music major, congratulate them for getting into music school. We have all worked our butts' off to be here, and don't deserve criticism because we are pursuing a career in the arts.
Another thing about music majors is that not all of us are trying to become stars. Besides education and therapy majors, lots of performance majors do not necessarily plan on performing all of their lives. For me personally, I want to be a vocal professor at a university level and direct operas. I love performing, and definitely want to perform on the side, but the performance lifestyle is not necessarily for me. Like a lot of other performance majors, I plan on attending grad school and even getting a doctorate degree. It can be almost impossible to land the job that I want without a doctorate degree, so music school is definitely not as easy or as short term as many people think.
Something that really bothers me is when people do not take music classes seriously, or think that music majors don't have difficult school work. There are nightmarish music classes we are all required to take, just like there is in every other major. We have to take math, wellness, and English classes too. We have to get close to 18 credits per semester if we want to graduate on time. Many of our classes are uncredited or worth only one credit, because if they were given their true credit value, we would all be close to 25 credits per semester. On the first day of one of my music theory related classes, our teacher told us that of the five classes that required tutoring the most at Carnegie Mellon University (where her daughter goes to school), four of the five were for engineering and the other one was for music theory. Just because a non-music major does not understand what Solfege is, that does not mean my hardest class is any less difficult than yours.
And lastly, the thing that saddens me most about when people criticize music majors is that you are criticizing our dreams. There is no "settling" with a music degree, employment for musicians is scarce no matter what degree you're getting. We aren't going to school for the money, the stability, or the good reputation of being a musician, we are musicians because it is our passion. There are few jobs out there where people will willingly wait tables during the day if they can have the opportunity to perform for other people at night. No one gives nursing majors a hard time because they love helping heal people, so why do people give music majors a hard time for doing what they love?
In no way, shape, or form am I bashing on anyone who isn't a music major or has never done anything music related. Music is just my passion, as your passion may be math, foreign language, chemistry, marketing, etc. There is nothing wrong with having a different passion than someone else, as long as you respect other peoples' passions just as much as you respect your own. And to all of the people who don't approve of my music major: I love performing, and fifty years down the line I'm going to love performing. Are you going to love your career choice fifty years from now, or will you regret the fact that you did not chase your dreams?
