Quote:
Originally Posted by charles maynes  |
Charles,
There is far more to life than winning an Oscar or being famous. Being happy and making money in your chosen field should be the first requirement. The rest follows. I see far too many intern applicants who are desperate for fame and acceptance but they are not really tickled when they take something and make it better for the client. That's the proper focus. Do good work and the rest will follow.
After I got my BA, I went to grad school and then joined a rock band, winding up at Berklee at the grand old age of 28. It was wonderful because I had a lot of experience under my belt and I could see that a lot of younger guys were struggling for absolutely no reason. I was able to work in studios because I had the experience and savvy, not because I knew all the Bird and Diz tunes without the Real Book. There are many Grammy winners who have dropped by Berklee for a couple of semesters, but who never got a degree. It isn't the schooling that gets you there; it's the schools who capitalize on people who may have gone there, even if they never really learned anything there.
There was a fairly recent article in the NYT by a father whose daughter went to USC. He felt he was wasting his money because she spent the first two years in film criticism, rather than learning film production. I not saying it's a bad school, but to represent it as a fast track to fame and fortune is not accurate.