How Music Training Helps Your Teen Land a Job

His fingers were a blur over the keyboard of the expensive Bosendorfer grand piano. Matthew Rodriguez performed a classical Russian piece brilliantly as the final performer of the spring high school recital. The crowd enthusiastically clapped with admiration when he finished, and rose to their feet to acknowledge the five talented students who had performed.

Throughout the preceding month, Matthew had spend long and difficult evenings practicing to prepare for the recital. As the crowed roared with delight, he knew that his sacrifice had been worth it.

His mother thought so too, especially since she knew his music training would help him land a summer job in at least three separate ways. He had learned about dedication, improved his intelligence, and gained much perspective by becoming an expert in one small slice of the fine arts.

1. Dedication is needed to find a job.
Practicing scales and trills can be tedious. Yet the student who practices the most is the one who performs with enough grace to rouse an audience to their feet. This same fortitude is needed when searching for a job, and especially in a bad economy, Matthew's Mother thought.

Furthermore, there are many discouraging moments and setbacks while searching for a job. Dedication is required to ignore the many rejections one may experience, and maintain one's composure for future job interviews.

2. Music training improves intelligence.
This was only a theory of Mrs. Rodriguez, but it seemed to her that music helped build her son's intellectual capability in at least two ways. He had to memorize the long pieces that he was to perform at the recital, and she surmised that filling his head with complicated and beautiful music was only good.

Moreover, he was learning quite complicated music theory, or the analytical portion of the music trade. His brain expended much glucose during each practice session, working hard to make connections as it learned which note combinations sounded especially good and which ones sounded less pleasing. Automatically, Matthew's brain was doing the work of an adaptable supercomputer, calculating resonant frequencies and changing its own internal structure throughout the piano practice, and strengthening these connections during the following nights.

At least this is how Mrs. Rodriguez imagined it. She knew that as Matthew increased his memory and analytical intelligence abilities, he would be able to interview better, work more efficiently, and generally have improved judgment in his job search.

3. Training in fine arts gives perspective.
Less controversially, Matthew's mom knew that training in a fine art such as the piano or violin (Matthew also played the violin in their small town symphony) would give an interesting and increased perspective to her son. He would look at life with a bit more color, and take a holistic approach in solving any problem he might encounter, including his job search.

Additionally, Matthew had some great stories to tell in the interviews, and a golden key if one of his prospective managers happened to be a fan of eighteenth century Russian classical piano composers as he was. Mrs. Rodriguez had experienced this particular advantage, as she had been offered her first accounting job after she and the interviewer began talking about the great musicians of Germany.

Teens listen to music, and some enjoy practicing and playing an instrument or singing in a choir. This was the case with Matthew. For those teens who found it a bit distasteful or difficult to practice and play, they should still try at least one instrument Mrs Rodriguez thought, for the benefits music brought to the task of finding a job were simply too great to ignore.