Degree: B.A. in Vocal Performance
How did the Stamps Scholarship help shape your undergraduate experience?
Being supported financially in this major really did encourage me to keep going. It encouraged me to decide to nurture my gift and to dedicate my energies to developing it. Had I not been so well supported, I would have had more anxiety about choosing to study music—worrying about being a burden to my parents especially. When someone studies music in school, they are not expecting an extremely stable existence. It is not as if you can just do well enough academically in a major like Music Performance and then have a great performing career; there are other variables. Even if you were performing a lot, it may or may not pay all the bills. So, going into music full force is a gamble, and I know that. Yet I am happy about my choices, and so happy and grateful that I have been supported in life to act on my inkling that music is for me.
Knowing what you know now, what advice would you give your freshman self?
Be loving towards yourself.
While compassion is a very important value for me, it has sometimes seemed easy to extend it to others but not to myself. I have justified this, thinking that if I don’t feel miserable about everything I do wrong, I will not know that I must change. Yet is it necessary that we condemn our errors in order to correct them? Perhaps they are really an inevitable part of life here. Not everyone makes the same errors, and perhaps you think that yours are worse than another’s‚Ķ but who are we to know this absolutely? I would advise my freshman self to appreciate the good things in life and to acknowledge my unique talents. Neither grades nor social acceptance are a measure of self-worth.
Who has had the greatest impact on you throughout your college career and how so?
If I had to choose one person, it would be my voice instructor of the last three years, Elizabeth Hagedorn. She has most of all shown me the power of teaching by example, though she has taught many things directly as well. She saw my potential and pushed me to honor it through my own hard work.
Please share your most memorable Stamps Scholar experience.
The most memorable thing for me was the national conference in Atlanta, especially sitting in the bleachers with hundreds of other Stamps Scholars while Mr. and Mrs. Stamps were interviewed in front of us. There were so many students there, and to know what had been given to all of them by Mr. and Mrs. Stamps… it was hard to fathom. Their giving inspires us to give.
Plans after graduation?
About a week after graduation I will drive from Wisconsin to Colorado with all my belongings and joyously begin the next phase of my life. I am first attending an event which honors a book of spiritual practices called Steps to Knowledge: The Book of Inner Knowing. This pathway is providing me with a sense of true direction and strength in life. It offers me the opportunity to live with integrity according to who I truly am and to make wise decisions in the face of confusion around me.
Beginning in June I will be working in a small mountain town for an opera company which hosts an artist training program in tandem with their summer season. I will perform in several operas and concerts put on by Central City Opera. Then in the fall I will attend CU-Boulder for a Master of Music degree in Vocal Performance and Pedagogy.