I have ten years of college. One of those years was in piano tech school. PTG came along when it was "time". Tuning has saved my life at this stage. But I am glad for my education, too. It led me down some fine paths. I was suited for those paths then, and I still am part-time related to them. Now I am a piano technician. It came along when I needed it. It seems to me we do what we do, go where go, become what we become. Some is choice, some conditioning, some genetics. I think life is bigger than our conscious choices. Every piano has its own demands on me, at least. Each one a personality which "talks". It is to me to listen, to respond. It is as complex as a "corporate job"- in some ways more. I had an old wise friend who rudely went off and died............... He begged me not to get out of my former profession. Years later I asked him if I'd screwed up. "You certainly have the disposition to be self employed," he said. I asked him some other unremembered question, and he repeated the same statement. 20 years before I did not have that disposition. I had to grow into it. Have I regressed, leaving that academic stuff (95% of which I can't remember)? Not at all. So, I'm glad to have had educational experiences, but life has had a different path in my old age. I have such a poor memory, but we used to have a psychiatrist in PTG who one day decided he wasn't interested in listening over and over to the same problems, and so turned to piano technology which got him through med school. A waste of talent? Not at all. My cousin said, as I mourned walking away from my church musician job, "You were concerned about doing good there. You'll do the same thing, only in a different environment." I think she summed it up nicely. les bartlett > > It's really tragic that so many students are pushed into competition > with more gifted academic students, and lose self esteem because they > excel in other areas. I remember a shop teacher who took troubled > students under his wing, and taught them how to use a linotype and > work in a print shop. We called him "Chief". It's not enough to > just give education in a "one-size-fits-all" cookie cutter school. > Everyone has different talents and these must be discovered and > developed. Otherwise, we have "square pegs in round holes". > > > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <http://ptg.org/pipermail/pianotech.php/attachments/20090605/4535016c/attachment.htm>
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