Susan and colleagues, I'd like to echo Debbie Cyr by saying that young people are entering our profession. Our program here at Florida State University has graduates in their twenties and thirties who not only look forward to long and successful careers but are well aware of their responsibility to pass it on when mentoring opportunities arise. Because our graduates come to the program with certificates in piano technology from a residence program and then spend two years here in one of the largest and most comprehensive music schools in the country, they leave with accelerated experience that I wish I had had coming into the field thirty years ago. As Debbie stated, "The young ones are coming" and they are savvy, energetic, and poised to take the positions! Anne Garee- age 51 and at some point will hand off this program to perhaps a graduate? Anne Garee, Program Director for Piano Technology Florida State University College of Music 122 N. Copeland Street Tallahassee, FL 32304-1180 850-645-7873 agaree at fsu.edu http://www.music.fsu.edu/Areas-of-Study/Piano-Technology http://www.music.fsu.edu/Areas-of-Study/Piano-Technology/Video-Documenta ry From: caut-bounces at ptg.org [mailto:caut-bounces at ptg.org] On Behalf Of DCyr141833 at aol.com Sent: Wednesday, October 28, 2009 9:47 PM To: caut at ptg.org Subject: Re: [CAUT] pin drop Susan, and all...... We've got young tuners at NBSS!!! A quick, off the top of my head count, says that over the past 6 years we've had 53 students graduate under the age of 30, and 31 over the age of 30. And if I look at just the past 4 years, including this years' class, 38 are under 30 and 16 are over 30 at graduation. Our classes recently are definitely getting younger, and also come with more music background.... as in - graduated with some sort of music degree, and decided they needed to have some way to "support their music habit". :-) We've even been getting a surprising amount right out of high school. Each class recently, we have had up to 4 students who were not of legal drinking age yet! The young ones are coming..... let us know if you need a good young tuner in your area! Debbie Cyr - not so young at 54, but not planning on retiring anytime soon! Registered Piano Technician North Bennet Street School 508-202-2862 cell In a message dated 10/28/2009 5:01:25 P.M. Eastern Daylight Time, skline at peak.org writes: Hi, Dave It's only confession time for people who feel like it, I'm sure. Hope you'll enjoy your new-found and well-earned leisure. I think that one problem faced by the profession over the next decade or two is the idea that for the full-time positions, people either do the whole thing, or they do nothing (retire completely.) If we face a shortage of young people training up and getting the experience they need to handle concert work, wouldn't it make more sense to split the positions, letting today's full-time people partially retire but do some concerts, while acting as coaches to their younger replacements? (if any can be found ...) I look around and don't see young tuners -- maybe it's just my particular area? I put some of the blame on the student loans (might better be called indentured servitude!) which leave bright young people with a brand new diploma and a six-figure debt. Talk about limiting their options! I suspect that all the non-traditional interesting artisan-type jobs are suffering from an absence of the young people who normally would be attracted to them, but now have to service debt as far as the eye can see. It was a dirty trick to pull on the young folks, mortgaging their futures while giving lots of profit and perks to big banks. On the other hand, a lot of those highly indebted young people now graduating look around for jobs good enough to service that debt, and come up empty. I could see a lot of those loans going bad, and after going through bankruptcy, the young people might then have a chance to explore and invent unusual occupations, in their own time and their own ways. Maybe some will be piano techs some day. Just MHO ... Susan Kline >So it's confession time huh? I'm retiring from a full time position >at SMU on February 1, 2010. The job has not been posted yet, but >will be soon (it takes a while for HR to jump through the legal >hoops they need to jump.) It is a great position working with some >great musicians who are also great human beings. It's just time to >slow it down for me. > >dave (70) -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <http://ptg.org/pipermail/caut.php/attachments/20091029/7a86587f/attachment.htm>
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