1. 1 year ago 

   Some ideas to meditate on for the upcoming academic year…

   Probably the phrase my students like hearing least from me (other than “Hey, I just got a call from the Choral Department, what are you doing next Friday?”) is “I’ve been reading this book…” because inevitably, I have 4-5 ideas for them to try out/think about regarding their playing, or studying, or career arc, or life in general. 

   Luckily for most of them, I didn’t have time for a lot of reading and reflection during the spring semester, but this summer I finally had time to catch up on some. A lot of these come from Paul Buyer’s new book “Marching Bands and Drumlines: Secrets of Success from the Best of the Best.” Even though the title would suggest a narrow focus, it’s really a book on leadership more than it is a book on rehearsal techniques. It’s sort of “Wooden” for marching band guys.

   Here are some of the things I gleaned from it:

   From Jeff Janssen, sports leadership expert, UNC:

   The question is not which obstacles can I point to as a legitimate excuse for why we aren’t as successful as we could be, it’s which opportunities do I need to focus on and expand to get us to where we’d like to be. The key is to put your energies toward the things you can control and impact rather than getting frustrated and discouraged by the ones you can’t. 

   Also from Janssen, and something I plan on asking myself and my students regularly:

   Are you here for something to do, or are you here to do something?

   From Jay Rees, Marching Band director at the University of Arizona, something perhaps more tuned to music and performance as a field, but nonetheless a great way to attack a project (emphasis mine, by the way):

   I think I lead by example in the sense that I’m extremely intense, extremely passionate about what we’re doing, intensely focused, and there’s no grey area with me. There’s spectacular and there’s unacceptable. There’s only two—there’s only two ways to do things.” 

   From this month’s Wired, an interview with Fred Brooks:

   You can learn more from failure than success. In failure you’re forced to find out what part did not work. But in success you can believe everything you did was great, when in fact some parts my not have worked at all. Failure forces you to face reality. 

   Last but not least, there’s this video from Tom Peters. I heard this same concept presented by one of my former teachers at the National Conference on Percussion Pedagogy in May. The summary is this: The only resource we have that’s worth anything is our time. No matter what our words, the way we spend our time the true reflection of our priorities. 

2. Notes

In the past calendar year I have:
Finished my Doctorate
Found a College Teaching Job
Moved across the Country
Seen the birth of my little girl
Turned 30.

Seemed like a good time to start writing stuff down.

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