This week I find myself in beautiful Western Michigan, working as a faculty member at Blue Lake Fine Arts camp. Today was the day that the students arrived, so after a day of faculty orientation, the camp was suddenly overrun with hundreds of high school art, music, and theater students. The first order of business for most of the music students was to audition for placement in the various ensembles where they will play for the next ten days.
As I met the students one by one, we introduced ourselves and I learned where each camper was from, what grade they were in, and whether they were new to the camp. I also checked in with them about whether they felt prepared for the upcoming audition. Some students were well acquainted with the process, and felt prepared, or at the very least ready to perform and be done with it. But I’d say the majority of students voiced some kind of negativity about the audition to me. Comments ranged from “I haven’t practiced and I’m going to sound bad!” to “I am definitely going to fail!” Overall, the students seemed to be wound up about the audition, and the stress about it was bouncing around among them.
There are plenty of reasons why students voice negative feelings before an audition. First and foremost, auditions are stressful, especially when added into a day that already consists of moving into a camp and meeting tons of new people. Almost none of us are completely comfortable when auditioning (Let’s face it, auditions are designed to create this scenario!). But there are other reasons why younger students might be overly negative about auditions. In some cases, students are actively trying to lower expectations of themselves (either their own or that of other students or teachers). This happens in other settings as well, especially in the lesson. Students say, almost reflexively, “This is going to sound terrible,” or “Sorry, I sound bad today.” Sometimes statements like this are accompanied by an excuse, but many times they are just thrown out as an opening statement.
Needless to say (I hope), none of this negativity is helpful in any scenario. There is a difference between voicing your honest feelings (“I am really nervous about this audition”) and voicing a negative reaction to something that hasn’t happened yet. Part of the pessimism that I experienced today is a reflection of the teenage culture in which being good at something is sometimes considered not cool. This is especially unfortunate, because it’s hard to tell which students lack confidence and which ones only want to appear sufficiently bad at their instrument to seem cool. The end result is a kind of negativity echo chamber that seems to benefit no one.
When approaching any audition situation, it is helpful to remember what mindfulness teaches us about the past and the future. Until the audition happens, it is a future event. We cannot actually do the audition until it’s time to do it, at which point the goal would be to stay tethered to the present moment. But before the audition, all we can experience is the preparation for it. That is what occupies our present moment (sometimes many hours of moments over weeks or months). The throwaway negative comment about an audition, or any other performance, is not a comment about the present moment. It is a prediction of a future moment, and one that can sometimes be self-fulfilling. This week, when I hear negative language from my students aimed toward themselves, I’m going to work on helping them to replace that language by simply describing their present state.