Written by: Chris Nguyen | 🕒 3 minute read

*WARNING* This is an unpopular opinion post based on my actual experiences in high school. You may disagree and say that I distorted the facts. But, this is what I still remember so many years later. It was such a scarring experience for me, that I eventually quit orchestra and gave up the violin because of it! So please don’t invalidate my experience, but instead, think about how the way some teachers communicated could’ve been better. When you’re in high school, everyone is super sensitive, so if you’re a high school teacher, you should learn how to understand your students, not torment them or bring them down.  

Listen to the audio version of the blog:

To all of my fellow musicians who were in a middle school or high school orchestra in one part of your life, have you ever wondered why the directors chose really simple and easy music to play? 

If you said that they sound nice to play, then that’s the correct answer… if you go to a 100% performance and arts school… but that’s not the correct answer for most of us who were in those public school orchestras. The real reason that orchestra directors made us play really easy music was to win those school competitions. I got to admit that there are exceptional people who do not reflect what I’m saying earlier, especially the newer generation of orchestra directors, but for the rest… They didn’t care about how nice the music sounded. They didn’t pick music that matched with our musical level. They never had any intention to make music fun. They only cared about beefing up their reputation - or worse - they already knew the competition was rigged and the judges knew who they were, so they received high marks regardless.

[Fellow Orch Dork] : That’s preposterous! How would you know? 

First off, I was a violinist in orchestra for 5 years and all we’ve done was play the same music everyday for some event like a concert or district competition. If we make a mistake, the directors would stop everything and go on a 15 minutes rant about how we didn’t practice enough and that it will be our fault for not doing good in the upcoming competition.

Like for reals, everything is NOT about orchestra. We have other obligations that we need to focus on too. 🙄 I’ve always had a thing against teachers who put me down instead of inspire me to be better, and my orchestra directors were just so toxic. One of them kept threatening to cancel my letterman jacket order because I decided to quit the next year - but that’s a story for another time. 

On top of that, I especially remembered a time back in high school orchestra where we competed at Annual Festival Disney. During that time, our school won the Silver Mickey Mouse trophy and everyone was thrilled by it… I mean… everyone except our orchestra director. So, on the day when we came back from the Festival, our orchestra director basically yelled at us during the entire class period. Instead of telling us that we did a great job out there, he just went on a rant about us making his reputation go down the drain and not getting him that Golden Mickey Mouse trophy.

Like really… Does it matter about reputation or winning some dumb trophy? 

Wasn’t it about having fun playing music and sharing that music with others? 

Was it even worth staying in a program that will constantly put you down? 

What happened to teaching to inspire? Sure they might’ve done well to inspire those who were truly talented in the class, but what about others? 

For you next generation orch dorks, ask yourself these questions when deciding to join orchestra in your public school. 

If you decide to not join your school’s orchestra, then don’t worry. It doesn’t mean you won’t be able to play your precious instrument anymore! There are many orchestra programs that you can join like the Houston Youth Symphony orchestra to fill your musical void and spread your music to people WITHOUT getting harassed by those school orchestra directors.

If any one of y’all have a story dealing with attention seeking orchestra directors in middle school or high school, share it below 👍