Two years of corn, conducting, and higher education

What does a cornfield have to do with Beethoven?

In the next two years of my life I will be living, with my wife Kaia, in Urbana, IL working on my masters degree in orchestral conducting. I am leaving a life of public school teaching to pursue my dreams and ambitions (insert metaphor of seeds growing into a mature crop here). It is my intent, in this blog, to share my experiences with my friends, family, and others over the next two years as I make the journey from high school band director to full time orchestral conducting student. We'll be leaving Wisconsin in August to start classes this fall.

I originally applied for grad school in December of this academic year and was accepted the day that I found out that I was laid off from my teaching job. I got an email from the music admissions department at the University of Illinois telling me that I was accepted only hours after I found out from my principal that I would not have a job next fall. After a month of wrangling my way through graduate admissions and the music department I finally received my official admission letter from the school, my student id number, and was able to apply for housing. At this point we have a place to live on campus (not a dorm) and we are ready to register for our classes. We are waiting to officially hear back about financial aid and assistantships so we are keeping our fingers crossed. Hopefully we'll figure out a way to pay for school AND eat.

In the meantime we have only two weeks left of school. I'm excited to be done with the year. I'll miss my students but I look forward to the opportunities and challenges of graduate school over the next two years. By the way, the picture above is not exactly the view from our apartment window on campus, but we're definitely a short drive from corn.