I'm a sophomore trumpet player at my high school right now, and I really want to audition for drum major next year. The thing is, I'm also really interested in DCI, and a lot of our staff is encouraging me to try out for open class 2017 season. No brass player has ever gotten drum major here because we think our director just wants them on the field but he says otherwise. I can't do both at the same time, but both are like my dreams. What should I go for? My band is important to me but so is DCI
It really comes down to what you personally want more. I'm not you, so I can't really tell which one that is. However, I can share with you my own personal experience, and then also share with you the experience of someone else that I know. When I was in high school I auditioned for drum major right before my junior year. I was all like, "if this happened to me, I would never want anything else again." I genuinely wanted the best for my band and was confident in my good leadership skills. I had some pretty brutal competition. all of them were very well-liked by my band director (I won't go in-depth in case someone knows that I'm running this account). I was favored by my director for my hard work and how much I cared about the program, but I rarely got the solos or recognition that I felt that I deserved and everyone knew it. But I digress. I didn't get the position, and I was upset for a while, but I was given a completely different position as a visual captain. Not only did I enjoy it—a lot—but it turned out to be way more my niche, and it allowed me to develop my leadership skills even further before I jumped right to being the face of 100 or more people. I should also mention that a lot of times in high school band I came home from practices feeling miserable and defeated, and even though I was surrounded by people that sort-of liked me, I still felt alone. In the past year, as a college freshman, I finally took the plunge and auditioned to march DCI, after I first heard about it as a high school sophomore and nervously said to myself that I could probably someday do it for several years. In February, I finally was offered contract from a world class corps!!!! And so I went on tour this year. It definitely had its ups and downs, and put my emotions and mental strength to the test more than anything else ever has. But due to that, I learned more in two months than I ever have in any year of my life: about loyalty, about managing your reactions, about accepting that there are some things you can't change or control, and about how you are capable of so much more than you think you are (literally, the majority of tour for me involved saying "I CAN'T DO THIS! IT'S IMPOSSIBLE!" and then somehow still managing to figure it out). I think it's also when I finally accepted what a real friend should be. If I had chosen to do something else with my summer, and I somehow saw what an alternate universe in which I marched would have been like, I would have wanted to go back and change my decision immediately. I also wish I was back n tour and/or with my drum corps friends on a regular basis because we all underwent the same kind of suffering and it can be hard to get other people to understand you the same way. So I started drum corps a little later than the time I was given to be a high school drum major, had I been selected to be one. However, I think that I got so much more out of drum corps that I did just being in a high school band in general, and it is such a unique experience that no one else has, and your window of opportunity to experience DCI is only so big. But also keep in mind that I am extremely biased, and while high school band still taught me important stuff, it pales in comparison to doing drum corps for me, and I don't ever want to relive high school again because it sucks and is terrible and the idea of social hierarchy is totally unacceptable and disgusting in my eyes. A girl that I marched with had been assistant conductor at her high school before, and this coming fall she was in line to be the head drum major. However, she also wanted to be in DCI and would be gone for a lot of the time that they would be rehearsing or something like that (I don't actually know the exact situation, they just told her she couldn't do both, so don't quote me on that). Of course, hence me saying that I marched with her, she gave up being drum major to go on tour. Her peers gave her so much flak for this; they couldn't understand why she would make that choice and thought it was super dumb. But they'll never know what a unique experience it is and how much stronger it makes you physically, mentally, emotionally, spiritually, and whatever else I can think of. (Of course, I personally told her that once you graduate high school, what you did during those years—like if you were the star quarterback of your school's team or you scored a lot of women or whatever—doesn't really matter to anyone in the real world. Because it doesn't.)Now, I realize that it sounds like I am trying to sway you towards drum corps. Because it's awesome, and I want to help anyone who wants to do it realize that they can. Because, in fact, they can. But I do hope that my personal opinion and account is kind of helpful. But maybe it will turn out that DCI isn't right for you. Maybe you have an awesome, dream-come-true experience in your high school band already. Maybe it will be better for you financially to raise money now and wait until you graduate high school. Maybe your parents are like mine and would never let me travel the country without them if I were under 18. Maybe one option works better for your schedule than the other. Ultimately, you should sit down and weigh the pros and cons—all of them (and even consider what you have going on in that time between the end of marching band season and the beginning of drum corps spring training, because if you choose drum corps, you're gonna give up a lot of time doing video assignments and workouts and stuff between classes and homework and your job and your other clubs)—even write them on a piece of paper if you have to. Decide what sounds more appealing to you. Consider the reasons why you want to do these things and whether or not they are good reasons. And most importantly, don't let your friends influence your decision. If you are really swayed towards one option and your friend or peer puts you down, you should punch them in he face and go do the thing anyway. (Don't actually do that. I just say that to my friends whom I am giving advice to a lot.)Actually, here's another idea. Consider what would be more heartbreaking to you if you have to give it up, and what would be more angering to you if someone else said you couldn't or shouldn't do it or you weren't good enough for it. And then just do that thing. Because that means you're the most passionate about it. And that's what matters.
