Mark Capriotti

Mr. C was my trombone teacher and assistant band director all four years of high school. I learned a lot about music, playing, and working from him, but the most important lesson he gave me was probably about how to improve at something. Seeing how the last couple of weeks have gone, it would appear as though I need to figure this lesson out again, and fast.

It was the end of a lesson sometime during freshman year; Mr. C and I were discussing practice times and methods. He mentioned how I'd been getting steadily better since I'd arrived, and the below conversation ensued. Looking back, I now really understand what he was driving at (there's a very good chance I didn't, at the time).

J: "Oh yeah, I try to practice an hour or an hour and a half every night."
C: "Well that's great for stamina, but what do you practice for that long? I haven't given you new material in a month or two."
J: "I usually play old pieces from middle school that I like, I guess."
C: "As long as you enjoy it, that's fine. Just don't start thinking that how long you practice determines how well you're practicing. There were guys back at college who would walk around bragging how they spent 6 or 8 or 10 hours in the practice room on any given day. Most of their time, though, they wouldn't be solving anything ... they'd be working hard without really focusing and practicing the right way. I'd do 2 hours a day on my own and end up ahead of them at our lessons because I figured out what had to be done, the way to do it, and then I did it."
J: "So how do I do that?"
C: "Keep practicing- I'll let you know what you stink at over time."

The result of that conversation was the formulation of a real work method for myself. Mr. C was telling me that anyone can take an instrument and noodle around on it for an hour a day- someone interested in being better than average needs to discern what the problems are and how they can specifically, logically, systematically fix them.

My point is that, this semester, I'm finding my traditional methods of work to be unsuccessful. Until now, my philosophy was that if I just devoted more time to schoolwork than anyone else, I'd come out on top. Sitting down night after night and attempting to muscle my way through my work like this used to be the way to go, too ... I'd figure it out, the concepts would make sense, and I'd learn what I needed to to do well. This spring, either the work is time-consuming without too much difficulty being involved (manufacturing, electrical lab) or so difficult that it becomes time-consuming due to lack of understanding (gas dynamics, elements). Chugging through these problems in my conventional way has resulted so far in only minimal understanding or less than desirable grades. By the end of the week, it seems like I'm simply running too low on sleep and energy to keep a high standard going.

In short, I need to find new, more time-efficient solutions to getting this work done. There must be ways to optimize the time-intensive tasks, and there must be ways to more quickly understand the difficult tasks to expedite them as well. If I can't find these solutions, this semester could quickly turn into a shitshow the likes of which I've never encountered before.

Thanks for the insight, Mr. C ... I think I get it, now.