PA Shorts: Resilience
I was perusing a discussion on one of the social media groups I belong to and was struck by a comment on resilience. The discussion concerned judges and whether certain types of comments are appropriate. One person was adamant that students needed to develop enough resilience not to be devastated by comments—even those that might be directed at their attire or their repertoire.
Resilience is the ability to recover from difficulties. Resilience implies toughness, buoyancy, and irrepressibility. A young tree that is staked too tightly for too long often breaks in the wind once the stake is removed because it is rigid, having never developed the flexibility to bend with the wind.
Developing resilience in our students and ourselves can be painful. We have to learn to stand up for who we are and what we know, while remaining humble and open to change. It happens over time with the right counsel from parents, teachers, and mentors.
Of course, we all say things we wish we hadn’t in the heat of the moment. Judges can accidentally phrase something in an unfortunate manner and those reading the comments can lash out.
I have heard parents say things like, “That _______ is an idiot.” I have watched students refuse to take advice (even my own) because they feel they know best. I have also witnessed comments being an incredible springboard to move in a new direction.
Discussing comments with students and their families and guiding them to reflect on their possible meanings, after the initial reaction, is one of the most important steps in keeping rigidity from setting in and allowing a balance of toughness and humbleness (resilience) to take root.
In my opinion, the best comments give suggestions rather than accuse. Instead of, “Poorly prepared” there’s “When you know this piece better, you can try a faster tempo and bring out the sparkle in this piece.” Instead of, “Technique needs work” there’s “Firmer fingers will help you to keep the 16ths more even in meas. ____.” The final grade will be the same but comments such as these give students a goal for the future and help them to bend but not break.
In this season of competitions, evaluations, and juries, I am going to be on the lookout for rigidity vs. resilience in myself and those I teach. But, I’m also going to be especially mindful of my part as a judge in helping students learn to bend—in developing resilience.
I tend not to believe it when people say that what amounts to unnecessary cruelty is actually helpful because it develops thick skin. That is basically a shoe-in excuse to be a jerk to anyone, anywhere, in any area music or otherwise.
The fact is that the life of a performing artist itself is already so difficult that that will toughen a person up on its own and function just fine as a filter to strain out the insufficiently committed. Tangential jerkiness on the part of an individual teacher or judge is much more likely to simply come from the fact that that person is a creep who enjoys making those beneath them in the pecking order squirm. In other words, just garden variety assh*lishness. And this “it builds toughness” is too often used as an excuse.
A judge, teacher, or other authority figure’s job is to teach the student how to do THEIR job. How to teach themselves, how to figure out what needs to be done when the teacher isn’t around. How to understand what the judge saw and heard and correct for it. That’s it, really.
Otherwise a student has a perfect right to bust the rude judge in the face and then tell him ten years later that recovering from the black eye is what enabled him to survive the death of his wife, or something equally outrageous and obviously wrong. Seriously — that’s what this spirals into if you follow it to its conclusion.
Life itself will engender toughness. What we need from others is clear instruction. That takes a lot more skill than just rudeness, though. Rudeness is easier, and within the capacity of the unskilled teacher.