Because you want your skin to be soft, supple, and as thick as an elephant's

All healthy derision and sarcasm aside, there are some things from my previous Violin-centric living for which I am grateful. Like the fact that you don’t get a performance degree without cultivating the resilience of something like 100 extra strength rubber bands. Part of this comes from the daily opportunities to stand completely vulnerable in front of both peers and established artists as they mercilessly critique and evaluate your work and ideas – the ideas into which you’d been putting your blood, sweat, tears and a kidney or two. You do this even when the ideas aren’t quite fully developed and you have to bite your tongue lest you give in to the uncontrollable urge to tell everyone that swear to God, in the practice room, you nail that passage every time. You do this every day and you learn to get over yourself and leave your easily bruised feelings at home because those extraordinarily fresh ideas you had? Maybe not quite as extraordinarily fresh as you thought. At least they aren’t coming across that way. But you also learn to evaluate your own work better. And then, what do you know? Your work really does get better.

I miss that. I also miss the sense of empowerment and exhilaration you get from getting out of the sidelines and into the ring.

And that is why I volunteered to get up in front of the class yesterday to share my life map. I was a bit apprehensive as it was a totally different ring from the violin ring, which I knew like back of my bow hand. Not to mention it’s been a while since I’ve put something I’ve created out there to be examined for more than just looking pretty or sounding funny. Granted, the setting for this particular introductory class is not to critique and evaluate, but rather to share and enjoy. Everyone gets a pat on the back. But it was still an opportunity to get back in the ring. Because someday soon, in some way, I’m sure that I’m going to have to get over myself again.

But maybe even more significant is that I stood up in front of my peers, my prof. and the TA this week and admitted that YES, I am a graduate student and I love pink, I love glitter and I love girl pop. So there.