All my bags are packed and I couldn't be more thrilled to being spending a week in the "Big Apple" with such a fantastic group of people. Prior to this trip, I have been to New York City twice for school trips in high school. When on those trips, all of our activities were pre-planned and organized by our adult chaperones. This time on my reentry to this vibrant city, our trip and much of the activities depend on student planning and networking. That element of our immersion changes the entire dynamic of the experiences we will have. Although our years in school range from sophomores to seniors, I think that it is really special that we are all music majors and are traveling to NYC to pursue our professional goals.
To say that I am excited about this trip is more than an understatement. As a music education student, although I know that I will use my instrument and skills as a musician everyday when I teach, my overall knowledge about the music industry and performance is limited. I am thrilled to have the opportunity to watch, speak, and learn from those who are professionals and get an outside perspective on my singing. It is for this same reason that I am nervous. Our cohort is amazingly talented, but as a non-performance major, I hope to represent our program proudly. These are the formative years of my development as a singer and future teacher of the voice, so I want to absorb as much information as possible on this trip.
At the risk of sounding like a tourist, I am also extremely excited to go see all of the shows on broadway, off-broadway, and at the Met. Although we all knew that as part of our trip we would be seeing shows, I feel extremely fortunate that we are attending so many amazing shows! I also think that it is really cool that our we are going to see Die Fledermaus as just last year we performed that opera at UWEC and that all of the members of our cohort were involved in the show!
I hope that through our experiences I will discover whether living in a big city will be a good fit for me. I want to teach in at-risk schools after graduation. I know that that type of environment will be a huge change for me in my life. Although I have lived in bigger cities before, I have never been in the situation where I spent so much time in as culturally diverse of an area as NYC. In all cases, although multiple minority groups were present, the large majority were of similar ethnicities. Language was also an expected barrier in these situations as most of the people I interacted with spoke either German, French, Italian, or Japanese. In NYC, over 800 languages and dialects are represented throughout the boroughs. Especially in NYC, you cannot ever assume that the person standing next to you speaks your language so you need to constantly be aware of that.
Overall, although I hope to learn and expand my knowledge about performance, vocal technique, culture clash, and myself, I am going into this experience completely open minded. I know that after this immersion, there might be a possibility that I will not want to live in a big city, or I might feel more at home in NYC than in Eau Claire, but that is something I am excited to find out regardless of the outcome. New York City here I come!
Cory Bristol
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