After looking through the alums in the group, I decided to connect with a man named Myron. He seemed like the perfect person to talk to because his main mode of work is the type of work I want to be doing in the future: music education. I asked him about his life as a music educator and any advice he could give me. He responded articulately and thoroughly to those concerns, and he revealed even more about himself that I connected with. I am obsessed with the idea of language, and he told me that his second Brackenridge project (yes, he did two) was all about language and communication.
My experience with my research mentor was brief, but good. Unfortunately, we are from different professional fields, so although there wasn’t a tsunami of advice, he had good questions for my project and what I plan to do with it. He gave me a good opportunity to present my project succinctly and without jargon (which is going to be critical for the elevator pitches), and also asked what I was going to do with my album after I have finished it, which he gave me feedback on. I would recommend for both myself and for people meeting with research mentors is to do as much research about them as possible and see what they can offer you. Although that sounds sleazy, all they really want to do is help, and if you know everything that they can do for you and articulate exactly what you want, that will make both you and them the happiest.
The connections that I would need to make for my career are just knowing as many music educators as possible. With my limited knowledge of public education, the more references you have the better you will appear. I know that that really holds true for all lines of work, but other types of networking don’t really seem to apply all too much to getting a job in public education. Therefore, just working at many different places, doing a good job, and learning as much as possible there is really the best course of action in my case. In terms of music, the knowledge required for teaching is best learned by doing. This applies, yes, to actual teaching, but also all of the things you will be teaching. So, the best way to really teach music is to do it a lot and be good at teaching that experience. So another thing I am taking away from this project is just to keep making music, as I feel I am learning a lot of different things in a lot of different sub-fields of music.