BRENDAN ROGAK
“During class, I wrote out track listings for the next show. Mapped out song structure. Put together tablature of new songs for other band members to study. Anything that was musical and not academic (for at this point, I had convinced myself that the two were separate entities). I had absolutely ZERO passion for what I learned. Anything that wasn't getting me closer to a career in music was a waste of time, and a sinkhole for my parents' money.”
I've read through the testimonials and essays on your site and I'm substantially more excited to start this program and begin work. One thing I feel I need to discuss in this assignment is a marked personal difference in terms of the sum total of life experience.
Unlike many of my esteemed colleagues, I've had a fairly easy life. My needs were always taken care of, I never needed to take a job to support our family and was never required to work, except for low-impact secretarial and paralegal duty in my father's law office. So I suppose that the only real adversity I've faced is a constant feeling of being constantly pressured into a career that would be totally unsatisfying, with the tacit implication that financial security would more than make up for a boring job.
I love music. Absolutely love it. There's nothing in the entire world that makes me as happy, occupies me, holds my interest and arouses my intellect more than music. When I was younger, I would thumb through my father's 45’s and my mother's CDs, write out track listings for them, and they, in turn, would make me mix tapes with artists like Elvis Presley, the Supremes, the Beatles, the Talking Heads, and, occasionally, a slightly more dubious selection like Huey Lewis or Rod Stewart. But I hoarded the tapes greedily, listening to them on my red My First Sony tape deck in my room, on headphones - memorizing and learning to analyze it as best I could.
My clearest recollections from adolescence are: The day I bought my first CD with money I'd earned, the first time I listened to a recorded version of a song I'd written, and the first time I performed in a club. The rest is hazy and not particularly important.
When I was 17, a senior in high school, it came time to apply to colleges. I heard the speech a lot of kids must hear: "We're not sending you to college to make art. We're not sending you to school to play music. You're going to take real classes and get a real job." Not continuing to a university wasn't an option.
So I applied to NYU. Intent to study Psychology. I fought to get in. I really thought I wanted to go there. I reassured myself of this so many times that I eventually believed it. And I was accepted.
During class, I wrote out track listings for the next show. Mapped out song structure. Put together tablature of new songs for other band members to study. Anything that was musical and not academic (for at this point, I had convinced myself that the two were separate entities). I had absolutely ZERO passion for what I learned. Anything that wasn't getting me closer to a career in music was a waste of time, and a sinkhole for my parents' money.
I've been so paranoid of letting down the people who put me here that I completely forgot whose life this really is. Putting off my dream merely to satisfy someone else's expectation of me would really be gutless, and it brings with it a dangerous complacency that would set a terrible tone for my career and my life.
So here I am, writing this essay, willing, able, and, in fact, setting in motion the events that will end my stay at college, my acceptance to which made everyone so pleased and proud, and my defection from which will likely alienate and maybe even shame those very same people. All for something that, as I've been told all my life, isn't a "real job". I'm sure they see this as quitting.
But I have to believe that I can accomplish the only thing I've ever really wanted to do.
Sincerely,
Brendan Rogak
