College

**Note: My apologies! After knowingly hitting the "Publish" button on my last two blog entries neither of them seemed to have gone live. I'm not sure if this was a Blogger error or my own personal error by exiting out of my browser too quickly afterwards but either way this is a major problem. Again, sorry about that and enjoy this and future posts! - NSL

This weekend I started visiting colleges. In four days I was on three campuses that I am somewhat interested in: Illinois Wesleyan, Columbia College Chicago, and Eastern Illinois University. My plan right now is to study music composition but I'm keeping my eyes and options open for something that might interest me down the road.

After visiting Illinois Wesleyan it looked like a prime candidate. I had met some of the music staff after doing some IMEA activities there and they seemed as good as any other college would have. I was also interested in the number of people in the classes: IWU only has about 2,100 students total, I would assume, since they are known for their nursing program, enrollment in the music program would be small, and even smaller for the composition program. I thought I would like a smaller atmosphere, so I thought the Wesleyan trip was a worthwhile one.

The next day I traveled up to Chicago to go to Columbia College's open house. They filed everyone into the amazing Auditorium Theater just off of Michigan Ave. downtown, and put on a huge show for everyone. There were dancers, a choir, a rock band covering a U2 song whose singer was the head of the music department. It was quite the production, and they made it clear their focus was in the arts. The campus is spread out over about six buildings in downtown Chicago, most shared with other businesses or universities. The apartments were also spread out and shared, and many had a great view of Lake Michigan. I then thought that having a college experience in a big city would be the best thing for me; I had always been someone who likes bustle.

On Monday I went down to Eastern Illinois, not for a formal visit or open house, but for Jazz Combo Day, something I had signed up for about a month in advance. I have a very good relationship with the jazz faculty there and they have been helping me become a better musician for the last two years I've been going to their summer camp in July. I talked to the percussion professor about what I was interested in doing in college and he got me an appointment to meet with the composition teacher, which was completely unprecedented and a great thing for him to do. I met with him and we just talked about the classes and course structure for the four years. They do have very small class sizes there; there are a total of eight composition undergrad and graduate students. This means everyone gets to know their teacher and learn in a one-on-one environment, which I think is great.


Truthfully, all of these colleges are still on my list, they each have something that is valuable to me. I have started very early with my college search and I hope it helps me come senior year.