19. Unemployed. Musician. About to be homeless. University dropout. Unfinished album

  • Thread starter Thread starter chivalry
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I find it weird that most of the people in this forum are musicians and yet they claim there is no money to be made from doing music? Im confused – does that mean y’all chose music as you had no other choice or something?
We all do it for love and a few earn their living doing what they love. Like Chili says, many of us are hobbyists that work/study/have families/bring up kids/are looking for work etc, etc. Me, I'm up at 3.20 each morning, do a full days work, pick up the kids from school and sometimes cook, hang with the kids, ferry them, monitor their homework, etc, etc. Whatever little spaces I can find to do recording, I will, if I'm not too knackered. Or feeling lazy.
But I dig life. It's sometime blows have taught me to be grateful for the air that I breathe. I might have a different view if I lived in Iraq or my kids got swept away in a tsunami or I didn't know where my next meal was coming from or if I truly had no options as is the case in much of Africa and Asia.
Greg_L said:
....................
The great psycologist !
But if you observe behind the actual words, there is, in a curious way, some sense there. That option exists, it's very real, many have taken it.....and hopefully, you won't.
 
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Chivalry,
You hate your Dad ? (maybe justified may not) Its fairly obvious though you need a male mentor. Look into the DeMoley (Freemasons for men under 21) or a similar respected fraternity. Find a sponsor or mentor you respect and follow what he says, you cant listen to 10 different opinions. You will get nowhere unltil you can function in society. Wisdom is way more important than intellect.
 
I find it weird that most of the people in this forum are musicians and yet they claim there is no money to be made from doing music? Im confused – does that mean y’all chose music as you had no other choice or something?

I do it because it's fun. I started playing in my teens and it's never stopped being fun. I've also never had any delusions that I'd make any kind of money with music. That's a fools dream.
 
I do it because it's fun. I started playing in my teens and it's never stopped being fun. I've also never had any delusions that I'd make any kind of money with music. That's a fools dream.

This should be the approach to most everything in life.

Chivalry,

It has nothing to do with being a musician. People are just speaking the truth about reality. Anyone can tell you the odds of making money with original music are slim to none.
 
You might have better odds at being bitten by a shark in freshwater while getting struck by lightning on a sunny day.
 
I guess I can see how the uni said you can't change to a different course now, especially if it is one of those engineering schools where you have to apply to a track and follow it exactly.

I went to one of those tech schools liek that and got really sick after a few months and wound up taking some incompletes in some courses. Then it turned out to be unrealistic to try and finish up those incompletes while trying to take the next set of courses to stay on track. I wound up transferring to another school and getting a liberal arts degree. Then I gruaduated during a bad recession and spent a couple of years bouncing from fast food job to fast food job, until finally winding up homeless for a while.

Sometimes, experiencing something that seems scary can make you realize it's not a big deal, so you don't fear it anymore. Homelessness is not one of those things. I will die before I suffer that again.

This is not a good time to be exiting uni with student loans hanging over your head. I suggest you drop down to a load you can handle and transfer to another school where you can have an undecided major or change majors at will. Maybe you can double major in music and something else. In any event, in your shoes I'd try to stay in school and keep student loans to a minimum until the economy bounces back. An undecided major might help you find a path that interests you and you never thought about before, like maybe psychology.

AS for me, long story short, I made it into law school and even finished up my science degree so I could do patent law. And as a reward, I now get to make my own music and have gerg tell me how sh|tty is. :P
 
A few things that popped up in my brain while reading this thread:

(01) What's the ratio of time spent on school versus everything else? I was pretty unsuccessful at school (I finished an electrical engineering degree a few years ago) until I started spending about 8-9 hours minimum on each assignment. Add that up with actual class time for 4-5 classes a semester and you get about 60-100 hours/week spent on class time, not considering lab-work or long-term projects. There's 168 hours in a week, so school was eating up the largest percentage of that by a large margin each week.

(02) I didn't really get out of the "danger zone" with my classes until I started doing 3 things: starting early on assignments, working with a group of friends, and taking advantage of Office Hours/Student Tutorials. Even then I still finished the program with a B- average. I breezed through high school working solo and spending maybe 2 hours/night on homework. College was way different.

(03) Just like I couldn't compare college to high school, I couldn't reasonably compare myself to other students. I was getting C's and B's at 100 hours/week while the A-students were putting in half that much time or less. My peers were flat out better at this than me. The important thing was that I didn't call it "done" at a time quota, I called it "done" when I thought I was comfortable with the material (and I was usually overestimating my abilities at that point, hence the C's).

(04) The school itself might have work opportunities for you to take advantage of that have flexible scheduling. Work-Study programs and Research Assistance programs can help out with tuition on top a regular paycheck. Resident Advisers might get reduced/free room & board in their dorm. Student positions might be pretty liberal with their hiring policies (our dorm cafeterias pretty much hired any student who asked until they filled their paycheck budgets; I worked at the library at the end of the career).

(05) Transferring to an entirely different school might help things out considerably. Something that's less expensive, has a program/teaching staff better suited to your style of learning, or maybe is just located in a place with cheaper rent might be what you need to get back on track with things.

(06) The hardest, most unrewarding, worst possible classes for me were all the curricular requirements and "filter" classes. I'm pretty sure it's by design, but it's kind of a one-two punch that the stuff you're only taking because you have to is the stuff that is kicking your ass the hardest and least forgiving on the curves (The average raw score on the final the semester I took Calc II was something like 49%: they actually had to re-weight the other grades because some kids would have otherwise walked into the Final with an A and walked out failing the class).
 
Yeah, the filter classes will kill ya. About 2/3rds of my starting CS class dropped the program within the first year. Not that the later courses actually got easier, they were just a little more focused.
The first class was "here's everything you need to know in this major all at once." Then the rest of them were just greater detail on each of those topics, so you actually learned something useful.
 
This post really interested me as i have been in a situation where i considered dropping out as i was not in the right mental state for anything never mind college.

sounds like its someway similar to what your describing.

could you go to a career guidence person/ within your college?

Just my pennies worth
 
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