Searching For A Teacher

Despite my depleted income, I've started thinking about finding a violin teacher in order to start lessons again. Part of this is due to the fact that our friends who are getting married a month after us want me to play at their wedding ceremony. I've played the piece before ("Ave Maria"), but that was back when I was practicing or playing violin almost every day. Now, it's a small miracle if I drag out my instrument more than eight times a year (usually for one of the Community Orchestra concerts).

I've never been big on practicing. In fact, one of the few years I was diligent was when I was in eighth grade. I wasn't spending a lot of time on the phone with friends and I had this weird motivation to become a better violinist because I thought it might make this high school guy I had a crush on like me more than one of the top violinists in the high school. Eighth grade was also the same year I decided that maybe I would become a violin teacher, and thus started the five year educational track to get to that goal. While friends participated in sports, I took up piano. When other friends got summer jobs, I babysat and taught the occasional violin lesson to one of the neighborhood kids. I spent a couple weeks of other summers at various music camps.

Music became a sort of obsession. There was even time when I couldn't imagine being involved romantically with anyone who didn't have musical abilities. We all have our temporary ideals. I would say I was a pretty decent violinist. I had nurturing, vibrant teachers and great opportunities to play with various groups while living in Rochester.

College changed all that. The music education classes were great. I definitely had a real enthusiasm for the material. In fact, I was so interested in the theory of music education that I convinced myself that I really did want to be a teacher for most of my freshman year in college. That changed when I took a class that had us working in the field as part of the class requirements. It's then that I realized that I didn't like children very much. This was on top of the fact that my violin teacher was stifling any desire I had to play violin.

Now that it's been 8 years, I think I'm ready to try again. Plus, I'd hate to think that all that money my parents spent on lessons going to waste!