Creating music with other people has huge positive impacts on our mental health. We recently had a chat with Music Education student Alex Woof about how he has been managing without his on campus community.

Transcript

Alex Siegers: Hi there, today my co-hosts Bach and Coda and I are calling Bachelor of Music Education student Alex Woof. Hey Alex, can you introduce yourself for people who don’t’ know you?

Alex Woof: Yeah, so, my name is Alex, I play flute and piccolo with the Wind Symphony and the Orchestra. and this is my 5th year doing that. I’m also involved on campus in Campus Bible Study with the Christian group there. And so yeah, we have had a lot of fun doing that on campus.

AW: Yeah, it’s funny, with the recent self-isolation going on I’ve really come to realise how important the community is to me. I think when rehearsals stopped that was a real significant hit to my mental health, honestly, just not being able to make music with people. So, I think SOAP and LIME and MPU have all really helped me, I think, just enabling me to make music with people is something I really enjoy, I wouldn’t be able to do that without them.

AW: Yeah, I first picked the flute when I was in primary school. I really wanted to join the school band cause both my parents play musical instruments and I wanted to join in on the fun. And I kind of picked flute, cause I thought “Oh that’s like the main instrument so I get all the fun to play parts, right?” and to a certain extent I think I was right, honestly. And ever since then I think I’ve just really enjoyed it, playing the flute in particular, I think there’s just this certain physical quality to it that I can’t explain that I really just enjoy about making music with the flute. So I think the decision to become a teacher of that really came out of the desire to pass that on to other people cause it’s something I enjoy myself so much I want to be able to help other people enjoy it as well. And it’s such a rewarding experience for me to be able to teach kids and see them discovering the joys of playing the flute for the first time.

AW: Yeah so that’s kind of a question that I am still asking myself. Obviously with Music Education that's kind of the career path that you would logically follow but I’ve also been really enjoying private teaching part time during Uni and so I think that’s also another option for me to consider, pursuing that full time. It really comes down to how I feel about it at the end of my degree and what opportunities come up.