For my five undergraduate years I got a double major in history and social science, a minor in Spanish and about half of a social studies teaching license. In other words, everything but the student teaching. I would have gotten that too but the truth is that I cannot work full time nights and be a full time student at the same time and do well at both. I can come |     | close but not quite. That is why I plan on going to graduate school for a Master of Arts in Education (or at least most of it) and to get the license next fall.

I just graduated college last May and I spent the last 7 years in different choirs and I must say that the choral experience is definitely one of the best experiences out there if you are open to it. I have found nothing else that makes friends as quickly as choral singing and nothing that gives so much back in terms of memory development and opportunity. As a 1st Tenor in a semi-professional choir (if we had gotten paid I would have said professional) I worked daily with 11-15 other men, depending on the year, to blend our voices in a way that we would sound as if we were one voice and to do this we spent quite a lot of time together, at least 7 hours a week in rehearsal and quite a lot of time outside of it.

The rewards were immense. Many of my best friends come from that tenor section and from the rest of the choir as well. So do many of my best memories and quite a lot of travel. Thanks to my choral experience I have traveled and performed up and down both coasts of the United States, from the Maritime Provinces of Canada west to Winnipeg and through Iceland, Latvia, Estonia and Finland. I've been on National Public Television and National Public Radio and I did not major in music or vocal performance but rather History and Social Science. 

Choral singing is a lot of work if you want to do it well but it has always been more than worth it for me. I hope many of you will reconsider and that those of you in choral groups will keep up the good work and push yourselves even harder.