Admissions Essay

Last year at this time, I was deep into the special hell that is doctoral applications. For most PhDs, this means evaluating writing and brushing up CVs. A DMA (Doctor of Musical Arts) in performance is... different. It's not that applying for it is harder, per se; it's just different. It's time consuming and nerve-wracking in a way that, for me, editing papers is not. I applied to seven schools, and each one of them had their own special application fee, audition requirements, and rep list. Some schools charged an extra fee to upload mp3s onto their website, and other schools wanted a labeled CD mailed to them along with the application. I made seven sets of audition material, learned a total of two hours of new music, and audio- and video-recorded pre-screenings (with a full-time job, without a teacher). I passed five pre-screenings, and flew to five different schools to play in person. It was hard, and I didn't really expect to get in anywhere. 

One school had an essay requirement, and the question was this:

My coping mechanism.
And also, my mom tells
me, the food she ate while
pregnant with me.
This explains so much.

If future generations of your family discovered a box of your most treasured possessions, what would they find inside?

I wrote an answer to the question, and at the time, it was the only thing I was remotely happy about in the entire DMA application process. I'm not sure I like it as much now, but I thought (since this was one of the schools where my floot skillz did not get me past the pre-screening) that I would share it here. So here it is, with some minor clean-ups, for your reading enjoyment or lack thereof.

If future generations of your family discovered a box of your most treasured possessions, what would they find inside? 

If my future family discovered a box that had been in my possession, it would be empty. I would be sorry if this was a disappointment, especially because I love the excitement of an historical treasure hunt, and have spent many happy hours digging through my own ancestors’ belongings. So if I were to leave nothing in my own time-capsule box, there would have to be a good reason.

Central Park in January.

I might have left my yoga mat in the box. I have spent life-changing hours on my mat, and I love its texture and smell. I can predict how it will stretch, and it has rarely let me lose my footing. Its calm green surface is torn up and missing pieces where my feet have landed over and over, and where my fingers have clawed in looking for a better grip. I love my yoga mat because it works well, and because it represents change and peace to me, but it would be wasted in a box. I would give it to someone without a mat, and hopefully they would pass it on too, until its life was used up. 

There would have been letters in the box as well- piles of letters in all shapes and colors of envelopes, some addressed in a business-like hand, others with the penmanship of a young child. I have been writing letters my whole life, and as much as email has simplified and quickened the communication process, I will always love pens, and paper, and envelopes. As time progresses, we will be able to talk to each other more easily. Contacting someone I love will only become faster and simpler. But the slow communication- the time-consuming letter, with enough pause to be able to think between each carefully written word- will still be special to me. The heaps of letters (from and to my grandfather, my fiancé, my middle-school pen pals) would have been in the box, if I hadn’t already passed them on to the next generation with the hope that they would understand the love of thoughtful communication.

Boulder in February.

And of course, my flute would have been there, cushioned on all sides by other possessions. Maybe not a specific instrument, but any of the flutes I’ve owned and played: my mom's dark silver-colored Yamaha from her high-school band days in Florida; an old but well-meaning Armstrong whose low register I loved; an open-holed Emerson bought from a catalog with years of birthday money; a Powell Sonaré that traveled with me through college and into graduate school. It might be my current instrument, a heavy-wall Muramatsu that I met during my master's program. It could be an instrument I haven’t found yet.

It was with the flute that I was able to express my individuality during my middle school years. It was the flute that was alternately a source of frustration and inspiration, a millstone around my neck, and the only goal I wanted to achieve.  The flute was my captor, dragging me to practice rooms late at night, and my companion, helping me sort through the issues of becoming an adult during long recording sessions. The flute would have been in the box because as seasons, friends, classes, colleges, jobs, and zip codes changed, my relationship with my flute remained my longest and most stable.

But the flute isn’t in the box either. The flute, like my yoga mat and collection of letters, won’t do any good in a box, waiting to be discovered.

I learned about Apāna (the act of letting go of things, from the body and from the self) on the yoga mat, but it applies equally well to letter-writing and music-making. When we write letters, we send a piece of our thoughts off into the world, and we may never get it back. When we play music, what we play might not be heard or understood; when we play flute, we may never completely recover the energy that we physically exhale into the instrument. Apāna is not the easiest concept to grasp; I feel that I have to re-learn it every day, but it is necessary. We send out things from ourselves because we have to, because it's healthy, and important, and scary, and makes life worthwhile. We risk giving because the greatest achievements are the riskiest. 

Seattle in March.

So it’s because of Apāna that I would let my time capsule sit empty, and instead let my most valuable possessions go to those who can continue to practice, whether their practice is yoga, penmanship, or music. And I hope that when my distant relatives open an empty box, they would be comforted by the knowledge that their world is a richer place because we pass things – like music – along, and are careful not to store them in a box.