Hi all! I’m Will Fecko, a sophomore vocal music education major here at St Olaf. I sing in the choir, am the student manager of the handbell choirs, and play trumpet in jazz band. I am taking this course because, for one thing it is a WRI general education credit which I am most in need of, but second, and more importantly, the topic of discussion is out of my immediate breadth of knowledge. I am very uninvolved in politics. I don’t read the news, I’m not on social media very much at all, and I’ve not taken any classes in high school or college that had such a blatant emphasis on the political realm as this class, Democracy and the Arts. This is what makes me both excited and nervous for the class, it is unprecedented territory. I am wondering how much this class might affect my everyday life in the arts, and making music. I wonder if learning about the material will help me to become a more functioning member of society, and become an advocate for political issues I hadn’t even known existed before. And more importantly for me, in my likely future career as an educator of music, how the material in this class can help me to be the most inspiration to my students as I can be. Just to listen to the speech yesterday from John Lewis, I can tell that this class will be full of inspiration. I’ll find inspiration from our readings, from the guest speakers that come into our class, and from my classmates every day. To take this inspiration and pass it on to another generation of students is a long term goal, but one that I think is attainable.
Some things I think I can bring to this class is knowledge of music. I’ve taken all of the music theory required for my major, musicology, and of course I’ve been making music for a very long time, so I may be useful if we find ourselves trying to analyze a song. I also feel I can bring a fresh perspective on a lot of the political issues that we will discuss, because of that lack of past experiences that I have.
I leave you with a picture of me and the cat that I grew up with, and yes I do like hairless cats more than normal cats.
