Andy Dittrich
There's something I've been forced to realize lately, through friends, family, myself. I, and many other members of drum corps across the world, are forced to make some large adjustments when they come home. I am still struggling with my adjustments. That doesn't mean that I haven't adjusted, but maybe that I have adjusted too extremely. Now I feel that the extremity of my adjustments has detached me from some identity I used to hold. I don't feel like I am that much different, but maybe in the midst of change I have left some part of my identity behind. I am troubled by this, because drum corps teaches us lessons that we are to use in our daily lives. But if we feel that we have to adjust so drastically when returning to real life, that we have to change ourselves so much to be functional in normal society, then maybe the lessons we learn in drum corps are too drastic, too severe, too extreme. So I'll bounce around again. Now I am a college student. It's another opportunity for adjustment, along with all of the other adjustments I have been forced to make in my life. Change, we change so much, and are forced to! It's scary at times. I, or maybe all students/marching members, feel like I have to live in two separate worlds. Right now, my identity in both of those worlds is changing so fast, that there are times where I feel like I am so busy transitioning that I have lost some of my true identity as a person, beyond marching, beyond school. Then again, it may just go back to our identities as marching members! We are just cogs in a grand machine, and it's so easy to feel like our personalities are lost in the show. It's true, we learn so many great things about ourselves in drum corps, and we also learn a ton about people. So, I guess where I have ended up is, we have such fragile identities at times, but are forced to make total adjustments into the real world before we even are able to find a niche again. It's more proof that drum corps people are truly amazing. But through all this transitioning, don't lose yourself ...