grad school – Page 4 – Les said, the better II

Calarts applications are due today. Well, clearly i’m on top of things…

The Fall 2003 application deadline is Monday, January 6, 2003. All applications which are complete by the deadline are reviewed by the faculty; those received after the deadline are reviewed in the order received if there is still space available in the program applied for.

I must resist the urge to call them tomorrow and ask if there is space left. No I should call them and ask if they think there might be space left.
So this leaves me with Mills, Wesleyan and maybe Bowling Green, but probably not, since none of the faculty’s name rings a bell and it’s in Ohio and the only reason I’ve heard of them is cuz they run a big festival every year that rejected me last year. I can’t beleive that I missed the application deadline for one of my three main schools. aug, i don’t deserve to get into grad school. If I don’t get into Mills or Wesleyan, I’m going nowhere.
nothing is going according to plan. i had a big five year plan. i was on my way to seattle last june, as a part of my plan, to visit a studio run by a firendly woman i met at a confrence, when i got a panicked phone call from my dad. since then, my plan has been off track.
there is a gigantic blister on the middle finger of my right hand from adventures in bass playing (second rehersal of the new band) and from using oil pastels on the cover of an old pizza box. Did you know that Munch painted almost a hundred versions of The Scream and many of them are on cardboard? There’s a Munch museum in Oslo with all of them on display. Travel broadens you.
My Wesleyan alum contact told me to try to get a letter of recommendation from Pauline Oliveros. I can imagine this conversation, “Hi, do you remember me? I was your driver at the OtherMinds festival last year. You’ve never heard my music, but I really need a letter of recommendation.”
Or maybe I can use other famous composers I met at OM. “Hi, Annea Lockwood, I lent you a jacket and you sent me a record. . ..” If I were smarter I would have given all of those people CDs. Missed opportunities. 20/20 hindsight. I’m screwed.

When you are trying to decide who to ask for recommendations, kep these criteria in mind. The people you ask should:

have a high opinion of you

know you well, preferably in more than one context

be familiar with your field (It won’t do you much good to have a glowing letter of recommendation from your manager at the insurance company if you are applying to a program in history or social work.)

be familiar with the program to which you are appling

have taight a large number of students (or have managed a large number of employees) so they have a good basis upon which to compare you (favorably!) to your peers

be recognized by the admissions committe as someone whose opinion can be trusted

have good writing skills

be reliable enough to write and mail the letter on time

A tall order? Yes. It’s likely that no one person you choose will meet all of these criteria, but try to find people who come close to this ideal.

Um, so that gives me, um, my composition teacher from Mills and ummm… maybe some other mills music faculty whom i have not talked to in five years. Maybe I coudl get some generic statements from old bosses about how i was hard worker… except that i was mostly lazy… um…

Join the fun, fast-paced world of writing recommendation letters!

Feel like you could write a letter of recommendation? Do you meet the above requirements, or at least some/most of them? Then, for the love of god, drop me a line, since I have no idea where or who you might be (that’s just a joke! of course I was thinking of you! How have you been! Great hearing from you! heh heh help.)

Statement of Purpose – Mills College

When I was in high school, I had to decide between pursuing a career in computer programming or in professional tuba playing. On the advice of my tuba teacher, I chose computer science. At Mills, I, finished all the requirements for my major by my junior year, so I took music classes and got interested in composition and especially electronic music. I graduated with two majors.

I started a professional career in computer programming, the plan I chose for economic reasons. It wasn’t long before I realized that studying computer science is interesting, but day-to-day programming is not. I had a hard time fitting in the culture of Silicon Valley. When I got laid off in 2001, I considered making a career change to music, but as a composer, rather than as a tuba player.

Last spring I attended the Composing a Career Conference sponsored by the Women’s Philharmonic. Almost everyone else there had a masters degree and the presenters all assumed they were speaking to a masters-educated audience. Realizing I needed more education, I started looking into graduate programs. Mills College seemed like an obvious choice.

Obviously, since I attended Mills as an undergraduate, I’m familiar with your reputation. There’s no better school on the West Coast at which to study electronic music. I’m especially interested in your algorithmic composition track. My dual background in computers and music makes me a good match to study this. I’m also interested in acquiring new skills in composing for pitched instruments. Because your program covers both electronic composition and pitched composition, I hope to be able to hone my existing skills and translate them, while acquiring news skills, to more pitched composing. Algorithmic composition seems like the perfect synthesis of these goals and Mills is the obvious choice of where to pursue them.

feedback? ok mills is good. why should they care about me? etc

Statement of purpose — Wesleyan

When I was in high school, I had to decide between pursuing a career in computer programming or in professional tuba playing. On the advice of my tuba teacher, I chose computer science. In college, finished all the requirements for my major by my junior year, so I took music classes and got interested in composition. I graduated with two majors.

Last spring I attended the Composing a Career Conference sponsored by the Women’s Philharmonic. Almost everyone else there had a masters degree and the presenters all assumed they were speaking to a masters-level audience. Realizing I needed more education, I started looking into graduate programs. Yours caught my interest because of your faculty, especially Alvin Lucier whose music I greatly admire and who has been one of my influences.

In the spring of 2001, I collaborated on an installation in the Exploratorium (a hands-on science museum in San Francisco) based on Lucier’s piece I am Sitting in a Room. I’ve used similar decay loops, based on Lucier’s piece, for other pieces of music and will sometimes annoy my neighbors by setting up my computer to run such a delay loop until it finds the resonant frequency of the building and starts to shake the walls.

Lucier’s approaches to music are fascinating and appeal to my engineering background as well as my musical background. I know I could greatly professionally benefit by studying with him. I think my engineering and musical background is a good match.

I’ve heard many excellent things about your school. One of your alums, Judy Dunaway, encouraged me to apply. I hope you will consider me for your program.

Weak ending. Any feedback to this draft is highly encouraged. Too kiss-upy? Lucier is like a god or something, for real. When I did that thing at the Exploritorium, we also put contact micorphones on a bunch of the exhibits and amplified them. A guy on another project came by and ironically said, “Ah, so I see you’re a little influenced by Lucier.” The alum I mention was his personal assistant or something. I just sent her email today, since she told me to talk to her before applying.

Ok, I have to write a statement of purpose for my applications. I have a book that adviss me of things to think about (it also advises me to start my application process 1.5 years ago. arg)

How you came to be interested in a field and why you think you are well suited to it.
apsects of you life that make you uniquely qualified to pursue study in a field
experiences or qualities that distinguish you from other applicants.

etc etc. it’s all dull and weird and hard. yikes.

Statement of purpose

When I was in highschool, I had to make a descision between pursuing a career in computer programming or in professional tuba playing. After getting advice from my tuba teacher, I decided it would be smarter to study computer science. In college, finished all the requirements for my major by my junior year, so I started taking music classs and got interested in composition. I graduated with two majors.
I started a professional career in computer programming, the plan I chose for eceonomic reasons. It wasn’t long before I realized that studying computer science is interesting, but day-to-day programming is not. I had a hard time fitting in the the culture of sillicon valley. When I got laid off in 2001, I didn’t look for a job right away, but instead evaluated making a career change to music, but as a composer, rather than as a tuba player.
Last spring I went to the Composing a Career Confrence sponsored by the Women’s Philharmonic. Almost everyone else there had a masters degree and the presenters all assumed they were speaking to a masters-educated audience. Realizing I needed more education, I started looking into master’s programs. Your caught my interest because of you faculty, especially [professor] whose music is very intesesting and whose books I’ve read cover to cover.
Your program is also interesting because of it’s electronic music program. This is where my current skills lie, but I’m also interested in aquiring new skills in composing for pitched instruments. Since your program covers both types of composing, I hope to be able to hone my existing skills and translate them, while aquiring new skills, to more pitched composing.

It doesn’t matter who I’m trying to kid because all the applications are due January 15h and I haven’t taken the GRE yet and I don’t have an appointment and I don’t know any vocabulary or highschool math. And more importantly, I don’t have much of a portfolio, especially in regular composition, which is what I want to study, I think, or not. Maybe I want to be more electronic.
christi keeps telling me to apply to Mills. But all of my academic reccomendations would come from Mils people. How would that work out? and I wasn’t very serious as an undergrad and wasn’t very sauve or polite and there are plenty of peope around who probably still don’t like me or think I’m a trouble maker. the old head of campus computer services thought I was compromising security on the netword and was convinced I was behind every computer misdeed that occurred. (It didn’t help when the Mills Weekly quoted me out of context when I was answering questions about denial of service attacks. It ended up as looking like a how-to manual, which is stupid because even though I know how to do stuff in theory, I have no practical computer cracking skills.) I only caused a minor system disruption once and it was an accident.
Anyway, I’ve already gone to Mills. I’d feel like a loser going to the same college forever. If they’d even want me back.
My plans are all in conflict. I want to stay here. I want to go away. I want to study regular composition. but I don’t know anything aout it, there’s nothing to reccomend me to the program. I want to use my degree to get research appointments. Appointments are for people who do electronic music. I already know how to do electronic music, I don’t need to go to more school. Research locations only want people with advanced degrees. Yarg, if I knew how to do everything they seem to want for me t get in, I wouldn’t need more education. How does that work?
whine whine whine. I’m so privledged. My whines ought to make people want to kick me. A freind of a freind is making lists of people who will be killled in the revolution. I’m probably on hiz list. I don’t think I want hiz revoltuion. (Hiz is a new genderqueer pronoun I just made up even though I’m not genderqueer. Yet another reason to be targetted by that sort of revolution.)
I just reread Ecotopia. I don’t have a single original idea in my whole head.