Nice People

What makes the world go 'round? Yes, scientists may give us explanations about planetary relationships and gravitational forces and blah blah blah, but when the day is over and all's said and done, you've got to admit that the world still exists because nice people still live in it.

Saturday night* a little after 9:00, I was sitting in Dr. Holden's office with my dear, dear friend Mr. A. Steinway (of course). I had stopped playing for a minute and was just sitting there, thinking and staring into space, as will sometimes happen when I've had a long bout of practicing or when I am just plain tired. As I was vegging, there came a knock at the door. Whenever people knock on Dr. Holden's door, I can never really tell who it is because the window in the door is too small, and the lighting in the hall outside is too dark. So I got up to open the door. After pulling it open, accompanied by the protesting sounds equal to those of a door of a several hundred-year-old sealed vault (if you've ever tried to open that door, you know what I mean) my visitor was revealed to be one of the voice faculty, who happened to be passing by.

Professor (with a British accent, I might add): Hello, Britny. How are you?

I won't relate the rest of the conversation because it will make me sound like a fathead. And really, the thing that made these ten minutes so impressionable to me was not that this professor knocked to say something nice and then leave, but that we actually had a real conversation. He asked me about grad school, and audition plans, and told me about the first time he set foot in the U.S. (in Manhattan, no less)--he was encouraging, helpful, and interesting, all at once. And he's not some (pardon my adjective) old fogie professor who's about to retire and has nothing better to do on a Saturday night anyway, and...well, it was just nice. It renewed my faith in nice people. Someday when I am a professor, I will pay it forward. And in the meantime, I'll do what I can as a measly undergraduate.

*I wrote this post a couple weeks ago, but never got around to posting it until today...