The Makings of a Valuable Music Lesson

I am a recent (2007) college graduate. I took an operations management class as one of my management electives, simply because the schedule of the class fit mine. I was also helped by the fact that is what I do for a living. The class was neither particularly easy nor difficult, but the tests were usually very easy. This came about because the instructor stressed one set of principles and built the whole test around them, so after you finished the first page of the test, you could go back and forth between the pages, filling in the rest of the test. If you screwed up the first page, you might be in trouble, but the first page was usually about the relationships between different types of operations in a company, so it was actually (for me) a lot of common sense. There was also some subjective type stuff where if you explained a relationship adequately, it was considered correct. In short, the tests were not difficult and the test results’ bell curve was squashed down toward the A to high-B range.

About halfway through the semester, a busybody in the front – anonymously, but we knew who it was – told the instructor that the tests were too easy and she wasn’t learning enough in the class. So the instructor, at the beginning of one of the classes, stood up and announced to the class, “At least one student in this class says the course is too easy,” at which, me and my fellow working students, as well as the regular students who were just appreciative of not having to work too hard to get a decent grade, immediately panicked at the thought of our (relatively) easy A or B about to be taken away, or at least, made a lot harder. The instructor continued, “I told this student I would consider discussing this with the class…” I quickly raised my hand and was called on: “Dr. -, did you also tell this student that they only get out of the course what they put into it?” Several cheers and ‘yeah, that’s right’s went out, and all eyes were on the instructor, who was grinning at me. For good measure, I added, “I mean, last I checked, there’s a whole wing of management books over in the library that she (I stressed “she” but corrected), or he, could read on their own to learn more if they think they aren’t learning enough here…” Several more ‘yeah, that’s right’s went up. You could see this chick slump in the front of the room. The instructor said something like, “So we can continue?” and we all agreed, and that was that. (Later in the class, the dejected student got upset at something else and went off on the instructor, confirming what we all had supposed, but at any rate, the issue was laid to rest.)

I bring this up because I had a, well not completely horrible, but “weak” piano lesson yesterday. We listened to some music, played through a tune, worked on some blues riffs, and that was it. I wasn’t up for anything else because I wasn’t prepared. When it comes to my music, I need to take my own advice and start putting more in so I can get more out. Of course, I’ve already documented having hit the wall pretty hard this week, so what I plan to do is work on some drills, go through the blues scale in all twelve keys, and work on just the one song (Blue Monk) that we talked about working on. I’ll still play for my enjoyment some, and with my poker game on Saturday, I won’t get quite the level of playing in that I would like, but like I said, I’m definitely going to take my own advice on this one.

Next Wednesday, my piano instructor won’t know what hit him.