Alexandra! I heard from our very tall tenor friend that you have a very sweet gig coming up. Congratulations! Hope we get to work together soon, and I want to see pics of what you come up with re: wardrobe!

So very sorry you were dragged here and forced to read, Over It. But thanks for doing so!

Aklista25, thank you for your comments. I hear so often from singers who have a similar path to yours, and that is one reason I started doing my workshops. I hate to see talent and joy beaten down by the harsh realities of our business and I hope to provide some guidance to help people avoid some of the pitfalls. I hope that singing will still be part of your life if you want it to be. Last year, I heard from a singer who had amassed a HUGE amount of student loan debt and was just realizing how it was going to handicap his career. He asked how he could possibly make money using his degree and skills. In response, I wrote two articles for Classical Singer. They appear in the May 2013 (The Day Job Dilemma) and June 2013 (Careers for Classical Singers) issues, and if you're a subscriber you can access them in the archives. They might give you some ideas you haven't already thought of for how to use your singing to provide for your family. Best of luck to you! Cindy

Thanks for commenting, SV. It's true that I didn't mention institutions in this post, but in my workshops I talk about them a LOT. I talk to students about what they should be getting from their schools and what they should do if they're not getting it. I give them a checklist of things to do before they graduate. I talk to them about how to choose a good school and a good teacher. That being said, I agree with you wholeheartedly that many of our schools and institutions are NOT doing all they can or even all they should. Opera companies are at the mercy of patrons and board members who may or may not know or even care much about the art form. The people who get to stick around are often the ones who can raise the money. It's a complicated equation. There are politics and economics at play, and while I think (and know!) that *individuals* at schools listen to people like me, the institutions themselves don't really care. Unless you are a huge name in the business, they're just not interested in what you have to say. Ultimately, we can't control what others do or think. We can only work on our own skills and strategies.

Jesse, thank you. That is very kind. And I really like what you have to say about vulnerability --- SO true. If we don't share ourselves, the audience feels cut off (though they may not know why). Also your remarks about being able to multi-task: ironically, anyone who has ever had to hire temps knows that actors/singers/entertainers are PRIZED employees because they can do a million things at once, do them well, and be charming all the while.

Anthony, I realize the post was long for your tastes, but perhaps you didn't read carefully. Nowhere did I criticize people for their taste in music or call them mediocre for their preferences. *I* don't like kiddie "opera" stars or the whole "popera" genre, but if you enjoy listening to them, good for you. My disagreement is not with others' musical taste. The problem for me is when people with very little musical training (in this case, specifically vocal training), insist that Singer A is just as good or better than Singer B simply because they like Singer A best. They are entitled to their preference, but they are (mostly) not qualified to judge what makes a singer superior. In the area of vocal technique (and related areas), the fact is that a highly trained singer or teacher IS better suited to assess the quality of singing. Art is to a high degree subjective, but not all aspects of it are subjective. There are some quantifiable areas and vocal technique is one of them. As a professional in this field, I find it objectionable and tiresome to hear endless praise from those who have no training heaped on an inferior product. Regardless of what these child and popera artists call themselves, they're perceived by the general public as opera singers, and that's objectionable to those of us who have studied and trained for many years to hone our art. I think you also misunderstood what I wrote about superiority. I went out of my way to point out that there are many, many areas in which I consider myself inferior. Math is certainly one of them. But classical music, and singing in particular, are my areas of expertise and statistically speaking I *am* superior in these areas. I'm not saying that makes me a better person than you. I am saying that I know more than you do (and here I mean "you" in a general sense, as I have no idea what your particular areas of study might be). If that makes me a snob in your eyes, so be it.

Susan, it is not my premise that voice students are (universally) lazy. As I wrote in the post, I do think that a lot of them are working very hard, but don't always have the right focus. Part of that is because they don't always receive the information they need; and here is where I think you and I do disgree: I believe that it IS up to the student to take responsibility --- ultimately --- for their own education, and that includes seeking outside sources, which, thanks to the Internet, are SO much easier to find than ever before. I do completely agree with you that many schools are falling down on the job of teaching any sort of business training, and preparing the student for the reality of the business today. There are all kinds of reasons for that and something I hope to address in a future post. The school must bear some of the responsibility, but ultimately, it's the student's life, the student's career, and they have to have the passion to go out and find out what they need to know. It is not easy, and it may not be entirely fair, but it's reality.

Wow, there are such great comments on this post! Thank you, everyone, for contributing your thoughts. I think this is a really useful discussion to have. Susan: earning a degree is certainly an accomplishment. I don't disagree with you that there's a lot of work (I took 17-20 hours a semester as an undergrad, and that didn't count rehearsals!). And I agree with you that schools in general could be doing a LOT more to help prep students for a career. That's one of my soapbox issues --- in fact, one of the things I do with my workshop is try to fill in that educational gap for students --- and it's a whole 'nother blog post. :) I don't teach at a university any more but I do work with a lot of university students, and there do seem to be an awful lot of them who want to just do the bare minimum they have to in order to get that piece of paper; or else, there are the ones with the big egos who have had a certain amount of success in the very small pond of school and think they're ready to take on the world, so they can't be bothered to seek out other perspectives. Perhaps I should have also said, there are plenty of lazy teachers, too! Because that certainly is true. Lee Anne --- thanks for this great perspective. I am SO glad to hear that your alma mater has changed its focus to define success in a musical field. When I was in school, it was the same --- if you weren't singing opera at the Met, you were a loser --- and that simply isn't true. Ironically, my own beloved teacher, Mignon Dunn, a regular at the Met, used to tell all the kids in the opera class that there were MANY ways to be successful in music, and singing opera was only one. She was the only person in my education who told singers that chorus was a good job! In my workshops, I make a big deal out of telling students that they must define success for themselves (and we also have a big segment on different types of careers in music). Kimberly - you've hit the nail on the head with one of the major problems in our educational system. It's NOT built to encourage independent thought. I was very lucky to have parents who encouraged me to explore, try things out, and figure things out. What do you think universities can do to help students break out of the box? Late Blooming Soprano --- thank you for sharing your story! It doesn't sound to me like you were lazy at all. :) I'd like to clarify that I didn't mean singers should rush through their education, but they can't dawdle either. I've worked with a lot of people who left school and then "took a few years off". When they finally are ready to try for a career, they haven't been studying, they're singing their old college repertoire which they often have matured out of, they haven't kept up contacts, and they're either close to or already have aged out of Young Artist Programs. Now, it's not always a hopeless cause, but it certainly makes it a LOT harder to get started. You have to stay on it. And we all know those singers who just never seem to get their techniques together, and suddenly they're 35 years old and cannot get hired.