Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Personal Narrative Juan P. Villota
Personal Narrative Juan P. Villota
00109247
Composition & Rhetoric
Alejandro Cathey Cevallos
Personal Narrative
Music as a way of life
It’s hard to live out your life doing something that you really love when you live in a
society that is constantly funnelling you into predetermined paths. It can be really hard to
face and defy this pressure specially in the breaking points of your life. However it’s
important to be able to follow your instincts and the human need to do something with
meaning that fulfils you and lets you feel realized. A career in an artistic medium can often
represent this situation for many people but can be a very hard path to walk. Knowing this
and being able to work for it even when it implies a lot of sacrifice and uncertainty can be a
really difficult thing to do because our parents and the education system constantly push us to
follow a more stable and secure path and don’t really encourage or prepare us to follow more
I encountered this situation when I was 21 years old and this is how my journey into the
world of music as a career formally began. I was living in my home country of Colombia,
and “Relaciones Internacionales” as they were formally called there in the native language)
and I was already on my 3rd year. Up until that moment I thought I could not be in a better
situation as far as building a prosperous career, I had excellent grades and I was really
thriving in this world however something was still missing. I felt unfulfilled, unable to push
myself to the limit but rather just walking in circles doing something that made me feel
any longer, I had to pursue my dream of being a professional musician and living off music,
something that had always been an integral part of my life and was always a huge passion of
mine. I had been playing music since I was a child, I thought I was good at it and nothing
quite moved me like it, so I finally decided to take a leap of faith and go for it.
To pursue this dream I made the decision to move to the city of Quito, Ecuador. I was
looking for a university where I could really develop my skills and push myself so I could
become a professional musician and this was a really hard endeavour. USFQ is a very
expensive school specially in comparison to schools in Colombia and I had to pay for it
myself but the financial burden wasn’t the only, or even the biggest obstacle. Leaving
everything behind including a very secure career path, my family and my whole life in
another country was a huge personal challenge and it took a big psychological toll on me. It
meant following my dream with no guarantee or certainty whatsoever of what would come.
This was my breaking point and music was my passion, my path to fulfilment. I was
extremely determined to follow this dream of mine and even through all the obstacle and
Now, 5 years later after taking this decision, I’m on the verge of graduating from the
“Music Production and Sound” degree and with the possibility of taking just a couple more
classes to get a dual degree in “Music Performance” if I so wished as well. I can honestly say
that I feel completely satisfied with my decision. I was lucky enough to be able to take the
right decisions and meet the right people to be able to reach goals that at one point may have
seemed completely out of reach. Music is a hard business because the uncertainty never goes
away, I still feel it, even after having achieved these goals such as playing in big stages in
front of hundreds of people, meeting and playing with huge artists and developing my skills
to a point where I can really earn my living through music. Now I have much bigger goals
keep pursuing this dream and keeps my drive up to keep working extremely hard at it, day in
Finally after going through this experience I’ve finally found my pace and my rhythm, I
believe this is a career that can grow with as much attitude and hard work as you are willing
to put into it, never forgetting why are you doing it in the first place. This is what my life has
been about, chasing this dream and never giving up, even when things get rough. I did it for
myself and I was willing to make the sacrifice and now I’m willing to keep living every day
following this dream through the thick and thin of it and keep working hard to make sure the