Hello fellow(ette) Fossils! I'm and adult violin student (45) and
heard about this site over in BAVS yahoo group. I've played piano
for about 40 years, and picked up violin a year ago, taking private
lessons. I have lived the Suzuki theory, and I think it holds a
great deal of truth in that I find many things fairly easy in some
music, in ways that feel 'very' second nature. I also at the same
time would have benefitted alot from more structured learning over
time though I did focus fairly intently in understanding scales,
transposition, exercises and so forth.

I find being an adult learner has a lot of benefits beyond excellent
music. And being able to accompany myself of midi, or beg my many
piano friends to play along, are some of the more subtle benefits of
being an adult student--especially violin. But that's not the reason
I'm here.

Excellence and achievement belong to any age group. I read somewhere
on the main site that somehow the achievement factor seems minimized
for adults. I think this is not so much because of some inherent
conspiracy against adult learners, as much as it is simply something
society has not really learned to appreciate to it's full extent.
While trends and trendiness are worked in and accepted for young
people, perhaps adult learners will soon create that critical mass
that makes adult learning not a trend, but an accepted pattern. This
factor of trend and pattern involves many areas of adult learning
besides music I suppose.

And for those who have found the skip-like stages of life that
propelled us through life in the past, simply are outdated and do not
apply any longer, are the pattern setters--like it or not. Life-time
learning means lifetime learning whether in music or engineering.
Music however is an especially value-added endeavor for adults when
it is being pursued by choice rather than chance. And for those who
are passionate about music, the value added sometimes is 'truly'
value added.

One thing about adult learning and achievment might be that many of
our accolades when we are young seem to be to just propel one into
adulthood successfully. Said another way, I know in my heart and
mind when I have truly acheived something rather than when I was
simply given a pat on the back. So regardless if one is learning
just to tinker, or has some Liszt in their sites, adult achievement
really does seem to have poor definitions from the starting point.
And as we age, it seems experience adds a lot of discretion in our
sensing achievment verus just going through the steps.

Defining achievement for adults also seems to be fairly nebulous.
Achievement for one person may not be achievement for another. What
I want to learn may not be what you want to learn; and, tapping that
inner connection that allows one to be in the music as an adult,
irregardless of canned mass media, is a personal thing. So
achievement for adults would seem to be at least partly on clearly
and lucidly helping adults define their real goals. An example:
I walked out of a music store with a beginner's violin a year ago,
having stopped in for guitar strings! I cannot honestly say that I
had ever been anything more than curious about violin in the past,
and thank God the thing only costed around a hundred dollars.

The next week (again out of no where) I had arranged private lessons
from a very accomplished and competent instructor. I took to violin
like a cherry on the Sundae, and haven't looked back--nor have I been
able to look forward!!!!. Three months later, I'm playing a much
better violin. So throughout the past year, I have gotten a little
closer to understand that my love for violin is closely attached to
my love for romantic music. Call me Mr. Legato--fine.. ;) But
still, my goals are really not clear, but my song-list beyond Suzuki
and Wohlfahrt sounds like some combination of Anniversary Song, Ebb
Tide, Stardust and Lionel Richie. But I'm getting closer to
understanding where I should go with violin, even if it still seems
vague.

And having refrained from the impulse to immerse myself in every form
I encounter (Celtic, Gypsy, Russian)--trust me, that is a real
danger, I am also discovering those levels of basic skills that will
allow me to form directions later on--keyword, later on. So some of
my levels of achievement are predicatable and measurable, but some
really are not so clear. A child takes directions based on
encouragement, a little prodding, but often a lot of chance--think
Rock'n'roll or something as a trend. But adults have life experience
that makes it especially important for them to express what is inside
rather than to simply discover as they go--though this of itself is
not necessarily a bad thing or direction. But getting at those
abstract expressions within should also be a part of the metrics of
adult achievemnent, I think more so than for children.


Part of the problem with understanding adult achievement, is that we
must first defined clearly, adult achievement.

warm regards,
al justice, charleston wv