[MUSIC] My favorite part is that, Berklee has a large pool of musicians that you can work with. It never happens in anywhere other than Berklee.. You can feel that you're not actually only a student. You and your teacher, you're learning from each other. >> Honestly, I've never been in a proper college atmosphere before. And I'm someone who'll watches a lot of movies, so I was a little freaked out because I though it might be like the Mean Girls. It was amazing because there was this atmosphere of music and everyone was so welcoming and nice to me that I felt like I truly belonged here. And some of the most memorable experiences that I have honestly had was that, I am the company manager of the musical theater club, and we just put on footloose and I stage managed it. And to be there, to be running your show and doing all these things that you really love doing and hope to do someday at college is amazing because you have all these experiences. You meet all these amazing people. >> One of the best parts of Berklee for me has been the fact that there are so many international students I really enjoyed right from the get go getting to Berklee, and going to hangs with friends or whatever on the weekends and meeting, being one of five Americans out of 25 people that are there, and just talking to them and hearing about all their perceptions of America, like it's just great to get that perspective because I hadn't been exposed to that directly before. So that was really cool and then of course with that comes all of their interesting influences that are completely different from mine. As someone who does eventually aspire to go into music education, I know that is gonna be is really beneficial for me and for my students, my future students, for me to have been exposed to all this different stuff. And just getting used to talking with people, and people have different accents and you figure out just trying to communicate with people. I don't know, I'm a huge extrovert so that was great for me. I thought that was a great experience. It's 70% associate professors so they're part time teachers, because the rest of the time they aren't teaching they're doing the real deal. And so what that means is if you are on top of your stuff, you do a good job in your class and your ensemble, your teacher who also has a band or two outside of school. There just as likely to pick you up, especially when you start getting in your later semesters, the teachers know that you're starting to try and get out in the field and they will start picking you up for gigs. >> My first week was overwhelming. [LAUGH] In a good way though. I remember coming here, and we got the schedule, and everything we were supposed to do, and then there was just hearing everyone play. I was like, wow. This is kinda good. [LAUGH] And I started doing the whole, am I really supposed to be here? I remember there was this jam session, the first week, and I'll just go there and listen. It's gonna be a cool experience. And then I got there, and the people on stage, I was like wow, no, these are not students, these are young professors just coming in to intimidate us but no, there were students. [LAUGH] They were really, really amazing. It was also motivating cuz I guess you can take it two ways first. One way was like, oh I don't want to be here, this people are amazing. I want to go home. But then it can also be like, oh, I want to learn. I want to like get better and hear myself as I hear those people. >> Being at Berklee helped me at least, redefine what being an artist meant. There's just as much artistry involved in engineering, conducting, the CWP majors, or designing synthesizers. There's just as much artistry in that as there is in singing in front of a crowd or playing piano. So, in that sense it's just very inspiring for me to be able to be around so many people that have so many different niche talents but their goal is all centered around the same thing, which is this love for music. So, four years being at Berklee around people like that is incredibly inspiring. And as a metal head, or you can come in as a composer. And there's gonna be some small community at Berklee that's gonna be welcoming that person with open arms. I came into Berklee initially thinking that I wanted to be a piano performance major. It wasn't until I got involved in some ensembles and started working with some woodwind groups and some strings that I really realized that my talent laid more in arranging and production management. And so, just putting myself in those situations really made me a more well-rounded musician.