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Picking up an instrument and joining a band is one of the best ways to spend time in college.
When the semester drags on, making time to learn music or join a band can feel like an extra chore, but it might be exactly what students need. College is the easiest time to start a hobby that will stay with you for life, and playing an instrument is one of the best you can choose.
The diligence and consistency required to learn an instrument are well worth the effort, and yield a skill that reshapes your life. Whether you lazily strum country songs on the sofa or pour yourself into Beethoven’s violin concerto in D major, learning an instrument provides a creative outlet. Grappling with uncomfortable chord shapes will be worth the pleasure of playing your favorite songs.
The biggest hurdle is beginning to play, which is why it’s a good idea to start now when lessons are so accessible. In college, students have access to professors who can help with confusing charts and theories that are otherwise intimidating when beginning an instrument. Plus, music lessons will count for college credit.
High-quality instruments, like lessons, are not easy to come by. The college’s music department helps fill this need by providing instruments. You might even find someone living down the hall who’s willing to let you play a unique instrument once in a while. Although I don’t recommend swapping spit valve plungers with someone, an instrument might lead to a new friendship.
Take advantage of the lessons and instruments on campus to make the most out of your college experience. You won’t be dunking basketballs in your nineties, but you might be able to strum “O Holy Night” for your family at Christmastime.
After graduation, getting a job, and beginning a family, time becomes less and less your own, but right now, it is in your hands. Students have the unique privilege of arranging their schedules and investing free time in hobbies and clubs. Limits and deadlines still exist, but college provides students the choice of how to spend their time without parents, teachers, or managers rigorously monitoring it. Now is the best time to pursue knowledge for its own sake, so learn the drums and join a band.
There is a certain pleasure in leaning back from a reading assignment that is dragging and seeing a guitar calling you from the corner. You might not have an hour a day to play, but a quick reading break where you play “All Star” on a keyboard is better than doomscrolling for 20 minutes.
Music is also a good way to build relationships. Joining a band can connect you with fellow musicians or others who are as passionate or interested in music as you. Bands are a good way to get outside of your comfort zone and form new relationships that will help you develop your art. They let musicians reach new forms of expression that they could not achieve alone.
An instrument won’t just bring you closer to other students. The one-on-one time spent with professors in private lessons allows students to develop friendships with them. Professors are able to share their instrument — a core part of their lives — and inspire learning in a way that even the relatively small class sizes of Hillsdale College can not replicate. You might even discover your shared revulsion for bats in between measures.
Playing an instrument also allows the musician to engage with emotions and anxieties in a healthy way. Dexterity drills might leave you frustrated and cramping, but playing music has a therapeutic effect that helps let off some emotion in a productive way. It can be a refuge for melancholy or anger, but playing an instrument can also express joy and excitement.
As AI bloats the internet with mass-produced media, it can feel futile to pick up an instrument. It seems impossible to compete with a machine that produces content so effortlessly, but the nature of what we produce has meaning because we choose to dedicate our limited lives to learning and growing. Machines don’t get to do that.
You should learn to sing or strum because it requires you to try, and trying is a uniquely human privilege. The value of learning an instrument is not in the product but the experience. Meaning lives in the doing. Meaning lives in the lyrics screamed on the stage, in the bar smell, the flashing lights, the drive home, the lyric writing; it comes from the blisters and the campfire sing-along and from the musty pews and prayer books.
So get a group together and play some of the songs you listen to on the way to class. Playing a song you love lets you possess the feelings it evokes more completely than listening to it on Spotify. I love listening to “Wish You Were Here,” but playing it and saying the words lets me make the poignant longing of the song my own.
Adam Robbins is a senior studying English.
Illustrated by Annie O’Connor.
