Life as a professor provides mostly a steady stream of joys and satisfactions. Once in a while it tosses in a disappointment. Being obliged to watch as a fundamentally bright and gifted student screws the pooch—through a combination of inactivity, fecklessness, and unreliability—must stand as one of the most disheartening of those disappointments. So pointless, so meaningless, so avoidable, so unnecessary. Nevertheless, the occasional student resists every attempt at aid, shrugs off every warning, and remains apparently blind to the inevitable consequences, even if dismissal from the college has become an ever-increasing likelihood.
This semester I’ve seen one such student throw it all away. I know nothing of his motivations (or lack thereof), his background, the inner voices and/or forces that have kept him so paralyzed. All I can see—with crystal clarity—that light exertion would have been sufficient to prevent his failure. Considerably more effort would have been required for him to excel, but he could have stayed afloat without too much trouble. I just can’t understand—I’ll never understand—how an equation as simple as: “practice your music, do your assignments, and show up for class” constitutes a daunting imposition. But apparently that simplicity constituted some kind of emotional or intellectual Everest for this guy.
Mitigating circumstances: none. This was not a student who was holding down a full-time job, or a part-time job, or any job whatsoever. Nor was there a commute to deal with. The parental units have been coughing up the (high) tuition. Everything was just as convenient as could be. Still, he couldn’t show up regularly, turn in assignments, and practice his stuff sufficiently to perform adequately well, despite there being nothing whatsoever standing in his way.
Which just might have been the problem. A life devoid of challenges sounds appealing but is in fact a recipe for failure. No difficulties to overcome = no strength, no resilience, no commitment. I got the impression that this particular student had become quite adept at explaining away his failures, perhaps to an overly indulgent parent. I finally let on to him that none of his blather had ever worked with me: don’t give me that bullshit! I snapped at him one morning right in front of the class, after yet another glib explanation of the hatchet job he had just performed on what should have been a fairly straightforward exercise. The reason was clear to anybody: he wasn’t prepared. But of course he couldn’t say that; he had to come up with a self-serving lie. He may have become such a practiced liar that he had come to believe his lies. It happens.
I can’t let it get to me—even though it does, at least a little bit—but fortunately such students are rare. I wouldn’t last long in a classroom otherwise. Still, the bemusement remains: a career in music is such a long shot to begin with, requiring commitment, perseverance, and an almost intractable persistence: how can anybody be so foolish as to disregard the consequences of frittering? Oh, well. I suppose there’s something Darwinian about it all; weed out the weaklings now, rather than later. The classical music world will always have a place for its best and brightest, but smart-mouthed jerkoffs endanger us all.