This post is specifically for seniors who aren’t going to their top-choice college next year. You applied and weren’t accepted, or you were accepted but it isn’t financially possible, or perhaps for some reason you weren’t able to apply. If you had hopes for how things would go, and they didn’t go that way, you may be feeling pretty disappointed right now. Maybe angry, maybe depressed, maybe embarrassed. If that’s you, I want to tell you a story. And even if you’re not a high school senior right now, the story may be interesting or useful anyway.
The story takes place almost exactly 50 years ago. The jazz pianist Keith Jarrett had a special concert planned. Organized by a teenage concert promoter, this was going to be the first jazz performance at the beautiful Köln Opera House. (In English we usually spell the city Cologne. But if you’re looking for info on the concert, it’s almost always under the German spelling Köln, so I’m using that.) Jarrett, in his late 20s, was in the middle of a successful European tour. The Köln show had sold out—almost 1,400 people—even though the concert wasn’t scheduled to begin until 11:30 at night, after that evening’s opera finished up. A crew would set up microphones to record the concert with hopes to make an album. It was going to be great.
And then…so many things went wrong. Jarrett arrived in the city later than expected, after traveling from Switzerland by car through the mountains. He had slept poorly that week, and his back was in serious pain. When he got there—late—he discovered that the concert hall had given him the wrong piano. Instead of the top-notch grand piano he requested, they instead put out a beat-up baby grand that was mostly used for rehearsals. It sounded bad, especially in the lower keys, and the pedals didn’t work. Because of rain they couldn’t transport the piano he wanted to the opera house. He was stuck with a piano that wouldn’t be used for a high school recital, much less a professional pianist playing at a fancy venue. The best they could offer was to get someone to come and tune the rickety piano.
Jarrett said he was cancelling the concert. There was just no way he could make this piano work, especially exhausted and in pain. But he didn’t call it off. The promoter pleaded, and the mics were already set up, so he decided at the last minute to go ahead and play.
The concert was amazing. He played not only the best concert of his career to that point, but one of the best jazz piano concerts ever. He couldn’t ignore the shoddy piano, but he found ways to work around the problems. Instead of chords in the lower keys, he repeated patterns that could fill in for the lack of bass. He pushed harder against the keys—sometimes standing up and practically pounding them—and found ways to accommodate the piano with his playing instead of demanding that he have a piano that could accommodate him. It was an inspired concert, and the recording is still one of the best-selling jazz albums ever. They say when life gives you lemons to make lemonade, and the Köln Concert is considered one of the finest examples of musical lemonade. Many have been inspired by the way Jarrett made a giant success out of a near-certain failure.
But it’s not very helpful to just say “he got a lemon and made some amazing lemonade. Now you go and do the same thing!” It would be helpful to know how he did it. He hasn’t talked a lot about the concert—he apparently didn’t think it was as good as everyone else seemed to. But we’ve got some clues.
Take inventory. Jarrett’s piano was certainly a problem, as was his back (he wore a brace during the concert). But he also had some things in his favor. He had an enthusiastic audience in a hall with great acoustics. He had sound engineers ready to record whatever he played and make it sound as good as possible. He had his technical skill and ability to improvise. He had all his training and experience. Better equipment would have certainly been nice, but Jarrett still had what he needed to make a great show.
If you’re a good student who, for whatever reason, didn’t end up at your top-choice university, you’re probably in a very similar situation. You may not be at the college you thought had everything you wanted, but you still have everything you need. There isn’t a college out there that is going to make you less of a good student. It won’t make you less creative, less curious, less disciplined, or less thoughtful. Take stock of everything you still have that will help make your college education successful. You can work with that, no matter the school.
Start fresh with a fresh mood. Jarrett arrived in Köln tired and hurting. He was disappointed and angry at the piano situation. But none of that comes through in the music he played. In fact, he began with a joke: his first few notes were the same as the little xylophone they play to let people know the show is about to begin. He was able to let go of the bad feelings.
I don’t know what Jarrett did to shift his mood. It may have been as simple as concentrating on the playing and the habit energy of playing for an audience. But you have a lot more time than Keith Jarrett did. Instead of an hour, you have months. Do whatever it takes to make sure that you begin your first year of college excited for the possibilities and not disappointed you’re not where you hoped to be. You want to begin in a place of gratitude. If you’re in a waitlist situation, you may actually be shortening how much time you have to adjust your attitude if you’re still holding on to hope during the summer months. It’s one reason I usually think it’s best to avoid getting on a wait list.
Change the methods, not the goals. Jarrett was dealing with an inferior piano for his solo piano concert. He almost backed out of the show, because he didn’t want to give an inferior performance. And when he decided to go ahead with the show, he still didn’t give an inferior performance. He didn’t do the same thing he always did, only with a bad piano, and then shrug as if to say “what do you expect?” He made adjustments. He played differently, finding strategies to make something great. If you find yourself going to an inferior school (and you’re probably not; you’re probably just going to another good school that’s slightly different than the one you really want to go to), you can't resign yourself to getting an inferior education or lowering your post-college goals. You have to make adjustments. You have to study a little differently, socialize differently, network differently, advocate differently for yourself. But you can come out the other side with just as solid an education and with prospects just as shining.
Keith Jarrett’s Köln Concert is a great story, and I hope it can provide some inspiration and guidance for anyone who finds that things aren’t what they hoped they’d be, through no fault of their own. But what about when it is your fault? What if you’re the one who messed up? That’s a very different feeling: there’s still the disappointment and anger, but there’s also guilt involved, maybe even shame. But there’s a jazz story for that, too.
Another legendary jazz pianist, Herbie Hancock, tells a story about playing with Miles Davis one night, coincidentally also in Germany. And this concert was going great. Everybody in the band was playing really well, and they sounded really good. And then Hancock messed up and played the wrong chord. It was off, and everybody could hear it. Hancock stopped playing, unable to move. And Davis, the band leader, definitely heard it. And then Davis
“paused for a second. Then he played some notes that made my chord right. He made it correct, which astounded me. I couldn’t believe what I heard. Miles was able to make something that was wrong into something that was right with the power of the choice of notes that he made, and that feeling that he had. And so, I couldn’t play for about a minute, I couldn’t even touch the piano. But what I realize now is that Miles didn’t hear it as a mistake. He heard it as something that happened. Just an event. And so that was part of the reality of what was happening at that moment, and he dealt with it. He found something that, since he didn’t hear it as a mistake, he felt it was his responsibility to find something that fit. And he was able to do that. That taught me a very big lesson about not only music but about life. You know, we can look for the world to be as we would like it to be as individuals, you know. “Make it easy for me”, that idea. We can look for that. But I think the important thing is that we grow, and the only way we can grow is to have a mind that’s open enough to be able to accept situations, to be able to experience situations as they are and turn them into medicine. Turn poison into medicince. Take whatever situation you have and make something constructive happen with it.”
Turn poison into medicine. Let go of the idea that your situation is a mistake or disappointment. Accept it as something that happened, an event. And it is your responsibility to deal with it. Wherever you are a college student next year (or even if you’re not going to be a college student next year), accept your responsibility to be the best version of you that you can be in that reality. You've got a long way to go, and this isn’t the disaster it may feel like right now in this moment. It’s one of those things I say all the time: look at all the unhappy adults in your life; none of them are unhappy because they didn’t go to their top-choice college. It’s other things that make you unhappy, but this isn’t one of them. So don’t let this be something that makes you feel like you’ll always be unhappy.
I wish you well, whoever you are and wherever you’re going.
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