When I was eighteen, I decided to major in cello.

I knew I wanted to be a commuting student, so I chose Wayne State University. I was excited to study with a teacher there and eager to begin what felt like a serious musical life. I also knew, quite clearly, that I was not competitive for places like the University of Michigan or Michigan State. That wasn’t self-pity. It was simply true at the time.

Early in my sophomore year, I began thinking about transferring. With my teacher’s support, I arranged to take a lesson with a legendary cellist who had recently retired after a long career at Juilliard. My father and I flew to New York, buying a third plane ticket for the cello, full of anticipation and nerves.

I still remember riding the elevator up to his apartment in a high-rise building in Manhattan. It wasn’t what I imagined a “legend” would live in, which already should have told me something about how little I understood at the time.

I sat down to play the first movement of the Dvořák Concerto. He offered my father a whiskey, which he declined. I played perhaps twenty bars. He listened kindly, without interruption. Then he took the cello and worked with me on the opening. Even in his eighties, his sound was beautiful.

I did not appreciate what was happening.

I couldn’t really tell what he was doing, and I wasn’t able to respond in a meaningful way. After a few minutes, he told me plainly that I wouldn’t even be able to get on the doorstep of Juilliard. At nineteen, that was hard to hear. I was hurt and embarrassed.

The lesson lasted maybe ten minutes. He didn’t charge us anything. He was far kinder than I realized.

What’s striking to me now is not what he said, but how I responded afterward. Instead of taking his words as information, I treated them as a verdict. I went home and continued practicing, but without direction, without clarity, and without truly understanding what I was missing.

It took years for me to see that moment differently.

What I understand now is how generous so many of my teachers were, especially when I was stubborn, unfocused, or simply not ready to hear what they were offering. They met me where I was, even when I couldn’t meet them halfway. They invested time, patience, and care that I didn’t yet know how to receive.

If I could speak to my nineteen-year-old self, I wouldn’t tell him to be less ambitious. I would tell him to listen more carefully and to understand that kindness in teaching sometimes comes in forms we don’t immediately recognize.

I’m deeply grateful to the teachers who stayed with me long enough for that understanding to arrive.