Praxis Phase 1: Retrospective

Overview

These past couple months have been very interesting. Going into Praxis, I was completely sure I had made the best decision for myself; there was no way I wanted to go to college, and most of the time, blindly pursuing a career in music out of high school leaves people feeling aimless or poor. With college off the table and no clear way forward in music or work, this is very much a lifeline for me. My goal with Praxis has been and will continue to be getting a remote job, and based off of the first couple months, that seems very possible. We haven’t truly gotten into the beef of the program yet, but that’s all coming up very soon, so I’m excited to see what projects I end up taking on. For now, here’s a quick recap of the past two months.

What I’ve Created

Phase one of this program has been all about discovery and preparation. We’ve done a lot of projects feeding into those two concepts, which I will list and then break down a few of them. So far, I have: made a website with an introductory video, started a personal newsletter, and a blog on the aforementioned website. The posts on there so far include an album review, a case study on a musician I look up to, a thought piece on the future of artistry in music, a practice exercise for a sales email, an experiment I ran with Google Ads, and a piece about life lessons I’ve learned from working at a restaurant. These projects have all helped me a lot in figuring out what I want to do. It feels really refreshing to work on something and be able to choose what I want to make the project into, both in terms of subject matter and in terms of the project itself. For example, the assignment where I experimented with Google Ads was completely open ended. Our only prompt was to use a new tool to find a way to help a business. So far, not a single assignment has fit the standards of what would normally be considered an ‘assignment’. There aren’t any quizzes or standardized tests, no multiple choice or constrictive assignment parameters. Everything’s been very centered around what the student wants and how they want their lives to look in the future, which I find way more practical and engaging than about 95% of what I did in public school.

What I’ve Read

So far, we’ve only read two books: the concise version of Mastery, by Robert Greene, and Atomic Habits, by James Clear (which I had previously read). These two books are very similar. Atomic Habits is more centered around personal change and fulfillment, along with steps on how to achieve things through discipline and time, while Mastery is more of a study of a study of greatness. Greene’s book outlines many of the greatest thinkers in history, and details how they got to be so good at what they did. Among other things, it focuses on having a burning passion for something, finding a mentor to develop your skills, and becoming the absolute best that you can in your area of choice. Atomic Habits is less focused on the grand scale of achievement and more focused on practical ways you can improve your life, often with more standard goals that most people could relate to. While different, I think these books are both very good reads. If put into action, they will help alter the way you think and realize what each of us are really capable of.

What I’ve Learned

The bulk of my learning is probably going to come, but I have learned a few things. I’ve been able to narrow down my areas of interest to sales, marketing, and design. Right now I’m not really sure which one I’d pick over the others, but that’s what the next few months are for. I’ve also found out that the more I think about future, the more music becomes my absolute end goal. Obviously, I’m still going to do Praxis in order to get a job and support myself, but my absolute end goal will always be creating or being involved in the creation of music. I just can’t see myself doing anything else for the rest of my life other than music.

My Favorites

Of all of my projects, I think the sales one was my favorite. It wasn’t very difficult for me at all, and it was kind of fun. It’s not perfect, but I think it was alright for someone with basically zero actual experience in this stuff. You can find it here.

What’s Next?

In few words, I don’t know. All I know is that my rough outline of the next few months will be doing modules all along the lines of the areas I said I was most interested in. Hopefully by the end of all this, I have a specific position in mind, but for now all I know is that next week I’ll be doing a module on content marketing, whatever that looks like. I’ll surely be posting updates as things progress, so we’ll find out what the next few months look like together.