Why it sucks to be kind of good at the tuba

I play the tuba. I'm pretty good at it. In fact, I enjoy the instrument so much that I've dedicated my entire adult life to learning about music and the tuba so that I can live a happy, carefree life as a professional tuba player.

You know what's wrong with that plan? There are approximately 7,635* other people in this country alone who can describe themselves in the exact same way. Now, would you like to guess how many tuba playing jobs there are in this country? I don't know, but it is significantly less than 7,635. Basically what I'm trying to say is that I have a master's degree in a pipe dream.

So what do all those extra tuba players end up doing? Drinking. And finding other ways to make money. If you're lucky, you'll be able to get a job teaching at a college. Or you might swallow your pride and just become a band director at a public school somewhere, because that's a much more reliable source of income than teaching part time at a college, private lessons in 4 or 5 different school districts, and trying your damnedest to never have to work in a cubicle. But here's the problem with being a band director: this is a job that requires you to control upwards of 350 children at any given time, all of whom would like nothing more than to pierce your soul with their laser beams of pure evil and feast upon the goo that spews forth.

Here's a chart, representing all of the tuba players in the United States:




I fall somewhere in the yellow/orange sections, and I make very little money.

Monetary and job satisfaction considerations aside, there's also the fact that I live in Texas. I do not want to spend the rest of my life here. Let's take a look at these different professions and the degree of freedom they offer in terms of where you can live:



And that, friends and family that can't seem to understand, is why I'm going back to school at 29 for a computer science degree.

*I have no idea how accurate that number is. It's just the first number that popped into my brain. The point is, there's lots of people that are very good at the tuba, and very few well-paying jobs for tuba players.