Classical Grad Life

February 11, 2015
by Claire

Hello everyone!

One thing that I like to tell prospective students about is the various ways to get involved as a graduate student. One way is the USC Graduate Student Government, which puts on various events for graduate students on both the University Park Campus and the Health Science Campus.

There are lots of events that happen, including professional networking events, book clubs, happy hour gatherings, and discounted tickets to events in Los Angeles!

The most recent event that I went to that was sponsored by the Graduate Student Government was to listen to the LA Philharmonic at the Walt Disney Concert Hall. I really enjoyed it!

I haven’t listened to classical music in a really long time, and it was a wonderful way to spend a weekend evening.

This was the flyer that caught my attention!

We had seats that faced the conductor, which made our experience really interesting! I have never been able to see the face of the conductor before, and it was pretty inspiring to see how he was so immersed into the music. I found myself completely immersed in the performance and watching the conductor and all the talented musicians play. It actually reminded me about flow, a theory developed by the psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi that comes up in our occupational therapy discussions. The concept of flow discusses the full immersion of a person in an activity which the skill and the challenge is balanced; it often results in a different experience of time. I felt like the three hour concert flew by so quickly!

In our qualitative research class last year, my group and I conducted a mini research project on the experience of performance anxiety in musicians, specifically the contrast between solo instrumentalists versus orchestra members. I was reminded of our research and interviews with musicians as we listened to the performance as well. There were trumpet and horn solos in two symphonies, in which the entire orchestra stops playing and everyone listens to the really complex solo. I almost stopped breathing because part of me was scared of the soloist messing up. The solos were absolutely brilliant and I shouldn’t have worried at all. It was interesting that during this classical music performance, I realized that we had explored so many different topics in our program!

So that’s a snippet of what’s happening in my OT grad life!

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