Transcript:
This is Traumerei. I’m butchering the German, but it translates to “Dreaming,” and it’s part of a set of pieces for piano called Kinderszenen, “Scenes from Childhood,” by Schumann.
My piano teacher taught it to me when I was in high school. I remember him saying that even though it’s about childhood, it’s from an adult’s point of view looking back. In hindsight, college itself was like a compacted run through childhood all over again.
Much like a lone freshman, one instrument – the piano – is the star of all these pieces. But with one instrument comes many melodic lines, all wrapped within a single structure. For Traumerei, Schumann builds on the same phrase over and over again, and they each lead to one of a handful of conclusions as the phrases are repeated. There are major chords, there are minor chords, then there are the chords that are too confusing to decipher.
Just like everyone, I came to college wide-eyed. Every year was the same thing, going through the same cycles of trying for success, but each with a new approach. I had a pretty okay college career; there wasn’t an outstanding year, nor was there an extremely depressing one.
Much of my last two years weren’t even spent in Evanston. For my last quarter on campus in the fall, I felt detached from college. I questioned my academic pursuits and even toyed with changing majors last minute. I felt jaded, ready to move on, as if college was already over for me. Now, as I get ready to delve into adult life with heavy air quotes, I wonder what college had really changed in me.
Schumann’s Traumerei ends with the same familiar questioning phrase as the beginning. However, for the final phrase, it ends on an unprecedented chord in a new harmony – the epiphany.
I look back and wonder if I ever had an ‘aha’ moment like this and, to be honest, I don’t think I did. If anything, I’ve graduated humbly with a paper diploma and possibly even more doubts than I started with. But perhaps this is the less sparkly side of a college experience. I’m not fit and ready, geared with knowledge, definite in what I want to do in life. That never happened. For me, college prepped me to realize that nothing is as black and white as I thought, and yes, sometimes life can surmount to be as mundane as I make it to be.
The honesty of Schumann’s "Scenes from Childhood" reminds me of something my younger brother said to me once. “Time flies when you’re having fun,” he said. “So if you just do fun things, you’ll come home sooner.”
Kids say the stupidest things.
Sure I didn’t have extreme highs or lows. But as I look closer, there were indeed tears from both laughter and sorrow. And sometimes joy can be as simple as one 80 degree day amidst a week in the 30s.
I know I definitely had fun because time sure as hell flew by.
I never had an 'aha' moment, and perhaps that’s for the better. I still have too much of the world left to explore and too much of my life ahead of me to confine myself to any single ‘aha’ epiphany I might have at the age of 21.
If college was a mountain that I had to climb, I felt like I reached the top and found a plateau instead of a pointed summit. Flat and... sort of boring.
But hey, at least the view is still pretty fantastic.
Denise served as Entertainment Editor, Managing Editor and Executive Editor for North by Northwestern.