To be sure, I'm being facetious. I don't consider myself an artistic failure at all, just never succeeded at finding a way to make a decent living as a musician and eventually convinced myself to go back to school to earn a graduate degree. The reason I'm bringing this up is because I just finished my degree (M.S. in environmental chemistry), earned a cumulative 4.0 (best grades I've ever received in my life), but I'm coming away from school feeling completely morose and empty. Though I enjoyed a few of my classes and liked a professor here and there, I absolutely could not stand any of my classmates (most of whom are younger than me and had never been out of school) and was disgusted by the cynical, soul-sucking nature of a program that had been worn down from years of academic decay. Due to the crazy importance of pedigree (i.e. on-paper academic background), even my top-of-the-class test scores, superior writing skills (unlike most of their science students, I was coming off a background in the liberal arts) and solid in-class performances never mattered to the teachers and they basically told me to 'get lost' whenever I went to them to ask about working in one of the school's labs, etc... I'm leaving the program feeling sufficiently ripped-off and ferociously negative about what passes for successful science students these days.
As for background, I was coming off of a decade spent working as a self-employed music teacher and pursuing my independent artistic goals in the evenings. I recorded a small pile of records and wrote a ton of good original material. All of that was fine for a while but was rapidly burning me out. The band I was in had become somewhat of a disorganized money-sink and my teaching job was turning into a depressing nightmare (too many overbearing helicopter parents and disinterested kid students, too much driving from place to place in a car that was breaking down constantly, too many Guitar Hero songs, etc...). I got interested in going back for a science degree after working in a management department at an analytical chem. lab.
So now I'm basically just sitting at home like a hermit, doing odd jobs for money and wondering what the hell I'm supposed to be doing with my big, directionless and difficult self. Even with my 4.0 degree in hand, I feel like I made a mistake going back to school and shot out my own kneecaps. I'm no longer 'active' as a musician, but still spend most of my free time studying classical music, transcribing video game songs, composing small ideas, what-have-you... Of course, I'm doing the 'right thing' and filling out job applications and crap but I'm not at all excited or optimistic about the prospect of starting some dreary environmental science job somewhere with a bunch of world-wearied consultants, etc... I'm plagued by a sense of guilt/failure/uncertainty/etc... that I should be doing something with my musical background, even though I know that it completely failed the first time around. Compared with my stupid schooling crap, that was actually a product of training that I actually cared about and was able to invest my heart and head in. I stopped caring about environmental science at the moment I realized that pretty much nobody else in my academic program actually gave a damn about what they were doing, instead approaching it as nothing more than the most bland and passionless careerism. Anyhow, I apologize for all of this silly moping and dithering about. I'm just feeling craptastic and am curious if anyone else has had similar life experiences and can offer some perspective.
As for background, I was coming off of a decade spent working as a self-employed music teacher and pursuing my independent artistic goals in the evenings. I recorded a small pile of records and wrote a ton of good original material. All of that was fine for a while but was rapidly burning me out. The band I was in had become somewhat of a disorganized money-sink and my teaching job was turning into a depressing nightmare (too many overbearing helicopter parents and disinterested kid students, too much driving from place to place in a car that was breaking down constantly, too many Guitar Hero songs, etc...). I got interested in going back for a science degree after working in a management department at an analytical chem. lab.
So now I'm basically just sitting at home like a hermit, doing odd jobs for money and wondering what the hell I'm supposed to be doing with my big, directionless and difficult self. Even with my 4.0 degree in hand, I feel like I made a mistake going back to school and shot out my own kneecaps. I'm no longer 'active' as a musician, but still spend most of my free time studying classical music, transcribing video game songs, composing small ideas, what-have-you... Of course, I'm doing the 'right thing' and filling out job applications and crap but I'm not at all excited or optimistic about the prospect of starting some dreary environmental science job somewhere with a bunch of world-wearied consultants, etc... I'm plagued by a sense of guilt/failure/uncertainty/etc... that I should be doing something with my musical background, even though I know that it completely failed the first time around. Compared with my stupid schooling crap, that was actually a product of training that I actually cared about and was able to invest my heart and head in. I stopped caring about environmental science at the moment I realized that pretty much nobody else in my academic program actually gave a damn about what they were doing, instead approaching it as nothing more than the most bland and passionless careerism. Anyhow, I apologize for all of this silly moping and dithering about. I'm just feeling craptastic and am curious if anyone else has had similar life experiences and can offer some perspective.
