One picks up a lot of experience during forty years in a collegiate classroom. I have seen abundant good and bad from the students who pass through my classroom during their four undergraduate, or two graduate, years at the major conservatory of music in which I teach.
Conservatories are similar to, but are not quite the same as, regular old colleges. As both trade school and college, a conservatory must prep young people for a life in one of the world’s most demanding professions while at the same time giving them the overall education that they will need for their future, whether as musicians or not. It isn’t an easy task, and no conservatory really has the college-vs-trade-school balance down perfectly. For that matter, no individual conservatory professor really has that balance down perfectly, either. Yet, while we all have our own opinions on the matter, we all have the same basic end product in mind: a person who has the skills, the training, and at least the nascent professionalism to make a go of it in music.
Which includes this utterly basic requirement:
Just Show Up.
How simple is that? Be there. You must be present to win. And yet it seems every year I encounter students who aren’t any good at that most basic of tasks, despite being warned (repeatedly) that unreliability is the kiss of death in this profession. Nobody wants a musician who can’t be counted on. One can work around other issues as necessary, but this one trumps all.
That’s the reason behind my own department’s attendance policy, which states that students may take ‘x’ number of absences from class for free, no questions asked, but absences in excess of that maximum allowed will chip away from the semester grade, one-half letter grade at a time. The only exceptions are school-sanctioned leaves of absence. It’s a sensible policy and excellent practice for a career in the ‘real’ musical world, where rock-solid reliability is so fundamental as to be taken for granted in a successful musician.
And yet. I send out notices to serial offenders. I inform the class that I may not say anything about it, but I’m recording absences, just as I’m recording each time tardy to class, which imposes its own penalty. I will do the arithmetic at the end of the semester and that’s that. You could be doing A+ work in the course and wind up with a C or worse.
So just show up. It really is that simple. Even if you think that your theory class is less important than a rehearsal, just show up. Even if you utterly hate some class and/or some professor, just show up. Even if you’re intimidated by something, just show up. Even if you’re sure you’re going to bomb, just show up. There is no such thing as selective professionalism. If you’re not professional about everything, you’re not professional. Period.
If a student can’t learn that during those relatively benign conservatory years, then it’s best that the axe fall right then and there, instead of depending on the profession to do the honors.