As someone who is graduating with two majors, my goal is to continue working hard to do what I love because I enjoy it as well as because it is worth doing. When I started college, I set out to study in two completely different fields, not necessarily because I couldn’t decide on what I wanted, but because I knew that I wanted a career in journalism but couldn’t enjoy it without music.
It may be difficult to continue practicing both in the future, as they are different fields, but I am confident that I will be able to, because I have worked hard to make it happen so far. At this point, I know that I am continuing my career in journalism, and I’m happy about that because it’s what I’ve always wanted to do, but I am still going to continue making time to play, listen to, and learn about music because it’s part of who I am at this point.
I’ve always approached my time management with a triage system: what needs to be worked on first, how long each thing is going to take, what order things need to be done by, and what I need to do to be in an effective mindset for the work. Sometimes that’s stepping away from what feels immediately important to breathe, work on something else, or play something just for the sake of playing it. I know that music is going to continue to be useful to me in this facet of life.
I think that my greatest strength has always been my ability to be flexible and live in the moment. Some people need to have everything planned to get things done, but for better or worse, this has never been me. In my experience, having everything planned out beforehand just makes your time brittle and unable to accept new events or sudden changes, but working from the moment, just doing what needs to be done, and keeping yourself busy lets you drop and pick up things at will while staying focused and efficient. If I’m needed for anything in the future, I will be ready.
Ultimately, my goal is to continue my journalism career. I am planning to do so in a manner that is respectful to artistic integrity, whether that means planning things to play in a related order on the radio, taking extra due diligence to learn about something that I am reviewing, or knowing what things are important to ask about when interviewing an artist or musician.
Regardless of the field that I actually end up working in, I will always be a musician, because it’s important and it’s work that is worth doing. I don’t think that anything else that I could do would be valuable without it.