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Victoria College makes future in music possible

Arturo Fonseca
  • BY ARTURO FONSECA
  • Originally published May 26, 2012 at 5:12 p.m., updated May 26, 2012 at 5:12 p.m.

The Victoria Advocate will be publishing student essays from the Victoria College "What's Your Story?" scholarship competition during the next few weeks. Students were asked to write an essay answering the question, "How has Victoria College changed your life?" Winners of the contest, who will receive a $1,000 scholarship funded by the Victoria College Foundation, will have their essays published last. We welcome letters and columns from all students.

When I first came to Victoria College, I came with the express intent of becoming a registered nurse. I had plans for an IT type job within nursing and living comfortably with very good pay. The pay seemed to be all I cared about. I wanted to keep my love of music active with a hobby and maybe someday in the future come back and pursue it. However, the Victoria College turned that entire idea around and changed my life, thanks to a job here on campus, my amazing peers and one very special instructor that turned my future on its head.

My job here on campus provided me not only with a bit of financial stability, but also with a strong foundation for life. I applied for jobs all over Victoria, but no one wanted my work. I held three jobs for less than three months, and even had a termination under my belt. It took a semester to land a job at Subway, which was, thankfully, on campus. Needless to say, I was very excited after a semester of job hunting. However, over the year I spent there, I learned that the job gave me more than a paycheck each month. I learned to create for myself a new, more hardworking type of work method. I became more efficient, more flexible and more cooperative. I became a much better worker overall, and I was able to translate my new thought process onto my school work. I saw improvement in my grades and found myself with straight A's after the completion of my Fall 2011 semester. I can now certainly plan on achieving a much higher GPA than I could have ever attained in high school.

Musically, my peers are the most amazing people I've had the honor of meeting. Many of them were far along their musical careers, and some were barely starting. Regardless of experience, I learned many great things from each of them. I met Matthew, who has an aptitude for writing and composing musical scores as well as playing the piano. He became an important image of how I want to be as a professional composer. I also met Aaron, who was the piano player and auxiliary percussionist for our jazz combo here on campus. His ability to improvise over many different chord changes and styles was incomprehensible to me. He became another important image of who I wanted to be as a performing musician. These two musicians, including many more that I've shared groups with, have helped me construct my idea of what kind of musician I want to be in the future. One musician in particular, however, changed my life in a more drastic way.

Jonathan Anderson is the VC basketball coach, the director of bands, and is currently my main inspiration for being a musician in general. Jona taught me to never accept mediocrity, and that the best track to being a successful musician was countless hours in the practice room every day. It was the same person that taught me these things that also altered the course of my future. Jona believed in my abilities and made me feel like I truly had a place in the musical world. And he would not stop bugging me until I would agree to take courses in music. Now that I'm here in the program, I see more validity in the idea of converting to music as a career. Jona was able to help me turn my dreams into my goals. Because of him, I can make strong and viable plans to attend a university as a music student. My dreams of breathing life into my music for a living used to be a "what if?" that Jona took and made into a matter of "when."

For over 11 years, music has made up my life. It has given me so much success and happiness. So much, that it is high time that I dedicate my life to it. I learned here at Victoria College that if you have a passion, don't sell out or accept being average. Pursue it with your very heart and soul. Without that knowledge, I'm afraid that I may still be pursuing a career that I could possibly end up regretting. My past, present, and now my future, is full of music - a fact that I believe could only have been made possible by the amazing people here at the Victoria College.

Calhoun High School graduate Arturo Fonseca is 19 years old and plans to pursue a degree in music.