Realistic anxieties, or pretentious and trivial?

We have a boy, who grows up loving music and is an excellent piano player. It seems pretty obvious to everyone that he's going to grow up and become the greatest concert pianist of the century, but he wants to be a doctor. He tries to save enough money for medical school, and jumps at the chance to get a full scholarship by audtioning at the nation's top music conservatory and he gets it... only to realize that he failed to notice that said scholarship could only be used at that conservatory.

Reluctant to toss away such a great opportunity and under pressure from his family, he attends the school next fall. Although he learns a lot and enjoys studying there for the most part, he can't really see himself taking a career in music.

He doesn't want to be a music teacher because he's not a pleasant person and he knows it.

He doesn't want to be a performer because he freezes up when he's nervous. What's more, he worries about strangers judging him. He doesn't mind being criticized, not in the slightest, because he can use the comments to improve how he expresses his soul in his music. He's worried that they won't fully appreciate that it is his soul. He'd rather be a doctor and go home to his loving family and play piano for them after supper because he thinks they know what music really is to him.

-points at thread title-

I mostly need to know so I can figure out how people are going to react to him when he expresses these concerns.

Valid.

He might get around that with some practice. How serious is it?

A bit pretentious there, even though I can see where he's coming from.

edited 5th Jan '12 8:42:11 PM by TerminalOptimist

While it does seem like a waste of talent, and I'd be on the guy's back like a monkey if I knew him in real life... it's definitely not something that would come off as absurd, unlikely, or unbelievable.

The first part of why he doesn't want to perform, the stage fright, is a very legitimate fear. The second is a tad pretentious, yes, unless it's quite literally his soul, but anxieties are only rarely rational things, and it wouldn't render him unsympathetic.

edited 5th Jan '12 8:42:37 PM by KillerClowns

I think if you're an amazingly talented musician they're going to be mad at you if you don't go into performance but that's just how things are.

I knew an amazingly talented musician in high school — he wants to be a minister. I think his reasons for not wanting to preform but why would he want to be a doctor? Studying to be a doctor takes so much of one's time that it wouldn't leave much for music.

Some people be furious about him wasting his talent. Others would be more receptive about an occupation in medicine.

By the same token, some would find his anxieties pretentious and trivial, and some would find it absolutely understandable.

As to the matter of music, I suppose that would be the sort of thing that he'd do on the side as a doctor instead of studying.

Try to give him more reasons to want to be a doctor. Maybe helping others is his passion, or maybe his life was saved by a doctor, or perhaps someone close to him was struck by a crippling disease and it was medicine that brought them back. Whatever it is, it should be more than "being on stage scares me and I'm not a pleasant person."

Pretty bad. He'll flip out if he's playing and he thinks he's alone and realizes someone sneaked up on him, too.

@ everyone: -takes notes-

^ He wants to be a doctor because he's interested in medicine and anatomy, he helped out his uncle a little bit and he thinks it'll work well for him, and yeah, he likes helping people. Are those okay reasons? :/

edited 5th Jan '12 10:06:00 PM by SnowyFoxes

Good enough.

Just for the record, it's entirely possible to have a character's anxieties be both pretentious and trivial and realistic. People don't always worry about serious things.

^ That too.

Why would he think he could use the full scholarship he auditioned for anywhere but at the observatory that offered it? Am I wrong in thinking, for instance, that if Notre Dame offered someone a full-ride football scholarship, it's understood that a provision of that scholarship is that the student go to Notre Dame?

gray: it's common sense to some, but not so much for others.

Suppose he finishes music school and then goes on to medical school. That makes him a Renaissance Man or even a Doc Savage.

^ His family's fincancial situation makes that unlikely, but he can still dream.

Am I right in assuming that the character, as you describe him, is a musical genius of some sort? That might raise a problem of believability. If he's so awesomely talented, there are likely a lot of places that would grant him a full musical scholarship where he could also study medicine. Going for the observatory might just make him seem like a dunderhead unless you can concoct a convincing reason why it's the only option for him to pursue any kind of higher education.

Otherwise, I'd say there isn't really anything wrong with your guy's anxieties. Not every musician is a performer. Puts me in mind of the Darwin Cooke Spirit story "Almost Blue," about a piano prodigy who only wanted to play for his mother and gave up classical music out of anger at her when she tried to force him to perform in public (he later becomes a punk rocker—here presented as the antithesis of classical music— and the story dips into science fiction territory).

Conservatory.

The government has a list of "approved" careers for people that can use magic. He can use magic, so the government can let him take a music scholarship and even lower his fees if he didn't get one, but he has to pay all the way to become a doctor no matter what, since magic does more harm than good in medicine (please take my word on this and don't make me go on a worldbuilding speel). Bad experiences with magicians that used their skills for unethical experimentation only cements this position.

edited 6th Jan '12 9:35:13 PM by SnowyFoxes

As one of those people who was repeatedly told (and berated for) their unused potential, I'd have to say his reasoning on that front seems valid. That sort of thing always bugs the hell out of me IRL.

I have to agree with Terminal Optimist though — that last bit has a lot of potential for coming off wrong. Not saying it can't be done, because I know it can. It's the same sort of note I heard a song ending on recently, though God knows I can't remember what it was called. Ether way though, doing it right will be a bit of a balancing act.