Jobs are available to music graduates

Dear Harlan: I am a longtime reader of your column but have never felt the need to write in until I read the letter from "Follow the Yellow Brick Road" — the student fighting his premed-focused parents in order to be a music major.

As a music therapy major, one of my biggest pet peeves is encountering people who equate "music major" with "struggling musician driving a broken-down VW van whom no one wants to hire."

Nothing could be further from the truth. There are countless jobs that you can get with a music degree (some of them paying just as well as a doctor). To name a few: music therapy, music management, education, performance, design instruments, the list goes on. Going into the field of music therapy, I will have my pick of job locations; it's one of the leading preventive and alternative medicines, and there are not enough of us to go around.

I have many friends who are on the premed track, so I know what I'm talking about when I say that it is not for everyone. Being a doctor, much like being a musician, is something you have to be passionate about if you want to make it. I cannot imagine a worse fate than being stuck doing work that I hate every day for the rest of my life. — Singing a Happy Tune

Dear Singing: I think a lot of students get caught up in The Moving Walkway of Education. As if on a moving walkway in an airport concourse, some students just keep going in the direction their parents or friends happen to suggest. Then, one day, they look up and realize that their life has passed them by and they are in a place they never intended to go. There's no moving walkway along the yellow-brick road.

Dear Harlan: I have a boyfriend who drives me absolutely insane. I always have to fight to get his time and attention, because he works 60 hours a week. He doesn't even seem to try to see me.

When I express myself about this, he laughs and tells me I need to get over it and stop being overemotional. The only person I can express my frustration to is my ex-boyfriend (first love and first everything). There always has been a part of me that has loved him and still does. So when my ex finally told me he still loved me and had made a mistake, I was totally confused. I told him I couldn't be with him because I didn't want to get hurt again.

Now my current boyfriend is treating me worse than ever and making me feel horrible about myself, and my ex is working his butt off to be better. I feel like I'm in love with two men. I'm torn and completely unhappy. What do I do? — Torn