Comments

I’m all too familiar with the feeling: be prepared for the university, be prepared for the grad school, for law school, for new jobs, what have you. This is perfectly natural for those of us have high expectations of ourselves. And I suspect that there’s the anticipation and anxiety start to build up. If we are anxious, then working hard may not help to reduce that, for one thing, you’ll rightly to have a nagging feeling that you are either over prepared or we prepared for the wrong thing under such circumstance. This feeling is often justified.

I think a balanced approach to preparation is wiser. That is, in addition to working on technical issues, think about some non-music related issues, such as organizational or time management issues and try to learn a few more tricks so that when the pressure in school builds up, you can handle it in more methodic manner and stay calmer. Meditative activities are always extremely beneficial during such time of one’s life. Or simply the things you really want to do and may not have the time for it once you start university. You will be doing a lot of music for a long period of time soon, I think you’ll be better prepared for that if you step outside of the violin for a bit and try to be absorbed into something entirely different for even just a few weeks and then come back with completely fresh ears and mind. If you can achieve that before school starts, I’ll say you are way ahead of many others.