Life as a Freshman Music Major

Hello everyone! My name is Rebekah Hinson and I’m an 18 year old music major at Louisiana State University. My main instrument is trumpet, but I also play piano and sing! I’m writing this as a freshman in my second semester of college, and I’m here to report on the tea I’ve gathered so far. To be a successful music major here at LSU, you have to practice. A LOT. I’ve been struggling with this recently because I’m also minoring in Biology, meaning that my time is also being taken up by other classes that help towards my minor. One of my biggest struggles is trying to balance all of my classes and making sure that I give all of them an equal amount of time outside of class. I love playing trumpet, but I’ve always hated going into the practice room because 1) they sound horrible and 2) I didn’t really know how to practice properly in the first place. I had a great lesson with my professor yesterday and had a breakthrough in the way I practice. He told me, “Imagine that you’re playing a video game. Whenever you first start out, you suck at it, right? So to get better, you just keep playing it and eventually you learn how to play and the game becomes so much more fun because you’re actually good at it.” That really resonated with me because I like playing video games, obviously. After I got out of that lesson, I had probably the best practice session I’ve ever had because I actually knew what to do and what direction I wanted to go in. So I’m just here to tell you that if you are also struggling because you hate practicing, think about it like that and hopefully it will get easier for you, too!