Deciding What to Study

I was very blessed to grow up in a small town with an incredible school district. With over 23 Advanced Placement classes, Milford High School is one of the best schools in the state. So as a high schooler, I took advantage of this opportunity to my full extent. Eleven AP classes ended up giving me 58 credit hours coming into school here at Ohio State. But that was frightening to me. Obviously, I was going to study Public Policy Analysis, I had been set on that for years. But I needed to choose a minor to bring me to a full three years. So I settled on something which from the outside might look odd: I decided on music.

Growing up, I was, and I’m trying not to brag, an excellent musician. For years I wanted to go into music education and become a band director or go into saxophone performance and play classical sax. But I became enamored with public service and so I put music on the backburner. So when I realized I had almost 20 credit hours for free, I decided to add a music minor my second year.

Most people are confused when I tell them that I’m a music minor. And I think I’ve settled on this as my explanation. Public policy is all about serving other people. You study how to make governments, bureaucracies, and non-profits as efficient as possible in order to better serve their constituents or to better serve their interest group. But music is totally and completely personal. You derive joy not from what others do, but from what you do and from the art you make.

I realized that life is not all about serving others. That is necessary and important and how I am going to spend my career. But you have to make sure that you are fulfilling personal wants as well. And music is how I am doing that. I am studying music purely because I enjoy it.