College Band - Your Ticket to College Adjustment

College band really can be your ticket to college adjustment. It is typical of many young people to think that the sure route to feeling at home at college belongs to those who have lots of Advanced Placement credits, high college board scores or stand out because of their extreme good looks. While none of those attributes will stand in your way as you try to settle in to a totally foreign environment, my student experience and the experiences of my daughters give witness to how being in the college band can really help you to blend in and feel at home at even the most challenging college campus.

To begin with if you choose to participate in the college marching band you may get the kind of call my daughter did before her freshman year, welcoming her to the college and advising her of the early practice sessions for incoming frosh. These session can get you on campus early like the athletes to organize and start practices. Getting there early means getting a chance to familiarize yourself with the campus and to connect with other freshmen dealing with the same newness you face. It can also mean meeting upperclassmen who have been through the drill you are experiencing and can help to show you the ropes of college living.

When the school year starts there will likely be programs offered encouraging students to join all manner of activities from fraternities to Frisbee teams. While you will still be free to join additional clubs and take your chances at who you might encounter, you will feel pretty comfortable knowing that you are already a member of a well respected and representative organization. You have your niche and you probably already have begun making friends there.

Playing in the college band is non-strenuous way to connect with young people who are not in your same academic concentration or who are a year or two older than you and not likely to appear in any of your classes. How cool to know upperclassmen almost right away. How extra cool to walk across campus and be recognized and addressed by a junior or senior. Surrounded by your freshman friends you can't help but get a nice bounce out of this simple recognition. You will feel at home in a whole new way.

What my family members especially enjoyed about being a member of the band wasn't all about making friends, though that was certainly a major plus . We also enjoyed the weekly practices. That's right, I said we enjoyed the practices. Sure it was a place to hang out and talk to other people but what we also found was that band rehearsals were a time for us to relax and do something we enjoyed - play music. It didn't have to be great music either. Show tunes, marches, light stuff, all seemed to provide us with a lift. Being able to play with the band really is a wonderful way to feel competent about something when the rest of what you are doing may seem strange or uncomfortable. Going back to the dorm room you just felt better, more yourself, more ready to face whatever academic surprises were around the next bend.

There are lots of ways that people will suggest to you about how to get ready for college so that you can fit in and feel at home. I know my daughters and I tried many of them. We did the summer reading diligently. We read all the literature about the school and memorized the campus maps. We bought stuff compatible with the school colors and wrote to our as yet unseen roommates. None of those things hurt, but at the end of the day what seemed to give us a very special sense of belonging was our place in a friendly organization, doing an activity that we had grown up with and relaxing among students from a real cross section of college life. If you play an instrument, even if you don't excel, think about the rewards that might be waiting for you by becoming a member of your college marching band, pep band, concert band or orchestra.