Reflecting and Reassessing

By Dorothy J. Hill

Reflecting and Reassessing

I think we’ve had enough of the Valentine’s Day talk. Everywhere you look, you see red or pink, hearts and cupids, etcetera, etcetera. Besides, you shouldn’t celebrate the love you have for anyone on just one day. It should be expressed, acknowledged and celebrated every moment that you have with that person. It’s the same with Sweetest Day…don’t feed into the hype. Show your love everyday!

So, I titled this “Reflecting and Reassessing.” Well, I am slowly but at the same time quickly approaching my final steps of being an undergraduate student. I said before that it is rather bittersweet, but it is more sweet than bitter for me. This is the time and opportunity where I can show the world what I have and what I am made of. It is now when I have to give the greatest representation of myself. I have been reflecting over my life for some time now and I guess it is mostly because I am preparing for graduation.

Much of my reflection has been placed upon many of the decisions I have made during the time I have spent pursuing a Bachelor’s degree. I dig all the way back to the very beginning of my journey here as a student and explore everything to this very moment. It hasn’t been a tumultuous journey, but very challenging. Most of the challenge could have been avoided, but these are things you tend to learn along the way. There are a couple of semi-regrets that I have. I say semi because I don’t really regret following through with certain decisions I made, I just wish I had have done things differently.

The one main thing that I wish I had done differently was stayed at home and commuted instead of staying on campus. My freshman year was by far the worse living experience I had. Once I entered my sophomore and junior years, things went a bit better with the roommates that I had. But, I almost feel like for me, I had the roommate from the abyss. Now, I’m not knocking staying on campus because it is definitely different for everyone, and for me, it just didn’t work out too well. Because of that, I decided to commute my senior years.
One other thing that I wish I had done differently was read the fine print. You’re always told this in just about every situation, especially when signing a contract in business. Here it was, I was endeavoring into college and I thought that I knew all I needed to know where this was concerned, but fast-forward a few years and I’m looking back almost in a craze. I ask myself, “How did I let this happen?” “How did I get myself into this situation?” I was very angry about it at first, but then I just took it as a lesson to be learned. Now, with this situation, I just began to feel uncomfortable with what I was dealing with. When I graduated from high school, I was firmly set on studying Vocal Performance, but once I reached my junior year, I started to feel like I should have been doing something else. It was suggested to me that I change my major, but I felt at that time that I would be able to make it through.

Here it is, I am in the last semester, merely weeks away from the finish line, when it was once years. There’s no turning back now. As much as I would like to change some of the things I did, I can’t. It’s happened and the only thing I can do is make sure that this doesn’t happen in the future. Because of the discomfort I felt in my craft, I wanted to get as far away from the academia of singing as possible because it was causing my passion for music and singing to be fairly stifled. This definitely was not a good thing, but I learned from it and that is what matters the most.

The next question I’ve been pondering about within is “What are you going to do with this degree?” Well, honestly, I don’t know. I am taking things day by day and trying to make plans the best way that I can, but things will change rapidly. There are things that I intend to do in life, but what benefit the degree will provide, I do not yet know.

When I shared this idea of studying music for college, many people gave me positive and negative reaction. The negative reaction tends to be the same with a lot of people. They will say, “Musicians don’t make a lot of money” or the very question I asked myself, “What are you going to do with a music degree?” Sometimes hearing things like this can be somewhat discouraging, but I have become accustomed to it. Being a musician, and even at an early age, I learned how brutal this music business is and how cutthroat things are. You have to have a very tough layer of skin to survive in the world.

I am very excited to be graduating. My experiences have surely helped shape me into the individual I have become and as I continue to grow, I will always reflect upon those things that made me who I am. I live, breathe, and embody “Success with purpose”. Being an adult has shown that it has plenty of perks and I can’t wait to reap the rewards. Enjoy your youth and lesser responsibilities now, because it will be heavier before you know it.

Dorothy J. Hill is a senior from Chicago, IL. She is pursuing a Bachelor of Music in Vocal Performance. Dorothy is a Student Ambassador and currently serves as the Training Coordinator at Saint Xavier.