Haley Stead

My end goal is to be the best music therapist that I can possibly be. I want to help people who need it, in a kind and caring way, and to not only help them with their physical challenges, but also with their emotional and mental well-being through the use of music.

To reach this goal I am majoring in Music Therapy, and getting as involved as I possibly can in the SAMT (Student Association of Music Therapy), and The program for Music Therapy at SMU is absolutely amazing. I feel so blessed that I am able  not only to study with professors who have much experience in their field, and class mates who have many of the same goals as I do, but to also be able to interact with clients and practice Music Therapy this early in my studies, before it becomes my job. I cannot believe that I get to do something when I graduate that gives me joy and happiness and can bring others peace of heart and mind at the same time. When I am employed doing what I love, I will look forward to going to work every, single day, and I think that that is one of the most important things you can get out of life.

Singing is also such a great passion, and I am learning as much as I can, and enjoying every moment of voice coaching and opera classes so that I am able to become a well-trained vocalist. I hope that in addition to being a music therapist for my full time job, that I can also participate in the performance world of music as a vocalist. I am not sure what that would look like yet, however I do know that that is something that would be an extremely important part of my lifestyle.

Who knows what the Lord has planned for my future, But he has put these desires in my heart, and I am blessed with the opportunities to follow my heart and serve him in everything I do.

Everytime I hear the word skills, I think of Napoleon Dynamite. I can’t help it. I just see his face and hear “you gotta have mad skills, you know? bow hunting skills, nunchuck skills, computer hacking skills” and then I think… that is completely irrelevant to what I’m supposed to be talking about.

The blog topic for this week is skills, and to accurately assess myself I think is pretty difficult. I feel that collaborating with someone else to assess me would be more accurate. But, self assessment. Its something that I do every day. Not just in my major, or in Voice classes or in school in general. But with my friends and with my life as well. I want to be able to be completely happy with everything I do, every day. And, as morbid as it may sound, I want to be able to die right now and be completely pleased with how my life has been. So far I am. I am happy with the way I live my life, For how I serve the Lord, for how I treat people, for what my goals and ambitions are, and for how my lifestyle is. Everyone makes mistakes, especially me. But I have learned from the mistakes I have made, and plan to keep learning from the ones I will make in the future.

but as far as my personal skills go…

I am an imaginative person, I can come up with some pretty crazy ideas at a drop of a hat, and not all of them are realistic and usable, but it is fun to be able to create something that is interesting and unique to me, thats why I write and draw (privately), its another way of expression.

As far as being a skillful singer, I have SO much to learn. I am far from where I want to be. But, as I said in my other blogs, I don’t know if I will ever be where I want to be. I have a lucky four years to go with an amazing vocal coach and wonderful teachers, and can’t wait to see how I improve!

Flexibility. Most of the time I cater to other peoples schedules. I will bend over backwards to make something work. This can be a strength and a weakness, and I am not sure if it is a skill… Being flexible is good to an extent, but I need to work on not being so flexible that people can take advantage of me.

I am Extremely adaptable. I would say that this is definitely a skill I have. I have an easy going personality.I would be equally happy in cold weather as I am in hot weather. I love to ski, and I am very adventurous. I love camping, and I can spend hours swimming in the ocean. I know how to shoot a gun, and a bow and arrow, and how to use a pocket knife. I can sing well, act proficiently, and can dance (not like a dance major could, but I can get by). I can also get dressed up and know which fork to use at a Gala, or could carry on in a conversation with ease, and politesse.  I hope this doesn’t sound arrogant or like I’m saying “look! I can do all these things!”.  But, these are some things that my Dad reminds me of when I feel like I’m not good enough, and I think that these things are true, and that these things make me adaptable.

Collaboratively is something that I could definitely use a little more experience in. I feel that when I’m collaborating with others, It is my job to let them take the reigns and to do whatever is asked of me. As a result of this, I think that I sometimes fail to take charge when I should, or I don’t put in all of my ideas because I am afraid they will be stupid or dumb. Then I have to remind myself “there are no bad ideas, only ones which aren’t realistic” and the ones that aren’t realistic will be forgotten, or pieces of them can be used. Like while doing improv. for Piano, Professor Gunter always says that “There are no wrong answers, just unplanned harmonies”.

As far as being connected goes, I don’t know if I am old enough to have that yet. I feel that that comes with work experiences, and with networking, and things like that. I have a couple connections from back home, and SMU in itself is an amazing connection, but I haven’t really started “networking”. Honestly, I’m not sure how to even go about it. That is something that I will have to work on.

I have so many things to work on, and most of them are things that will not be improved quickly, but things that will improved over time. I am so thankful that I have these next 4 years to work on myself.

This is my elevator pitch. I get asked this question every day. What is music therapy? Normally my answer would slightly longer, however it is supposed to be about the length of an elevator ride, and I think this covers at least the basics.

“Hi, I’m Haley Stead. I am blessed to be pursuing a profession where I can combine my two great loves: music and helping others. I am an aspiring Music Therapist, and I want to help people. Music Therapy is utilizing different musical tactics to help clients overcome different obstacles that they are facing. There are four main populations that Music Therapy can be used with, such as geriatric, psychiatric, medical, and special needs. However it can also be used in other areas, such as with people who are suffering from depression, anxiety, grief, or eating disorders as well as with healthy people, in a myriad of different areas. Music Therapy is cost effective and extremely beneficial both medically and mentally. Here’s my card if you have any questions.”

These past two weeks have been chalk full of realizations.

These past two weeks have also been some of the most difficult weeks of my life. I have been stretched and pulled and twisted and tested to the farthest possible edge of my limits.

It is really difficult to be a person who has come from almost no music theory or piano background. Especially being in classes with aspiring concert pianists and having friends that want to play professionally in symphonies. These people KNOW what they’re doing. and sometimes it even gets confusing for them. Annnd then theres me. Never had a theory class in my life, barely can read notes, barely know my key signatures, barely can get my fingers to do what they are supposed to on the piano keyboard. (Quick side note – I’m pretty sure my fingers have a mind of their own! they do whatever they want and leave me wondering why they aren’t hitting the right keys in disbelief that my fingers aren’t nearly as coordinated as I thought they were- this can only take time to develop the coordination, and I will not rest until they obey me – but I have baffled myself at how little control I have over my own fingers). I have challenged my voice so much since I have been here – sometimes it scares me what can come out of my own mouth. For someone who has been so quiet her whole life, I am amazed by how much sound can come out. I have spent so much time in my life trying to blend, and I feel like maybe its time for me to start standing out. I feel like people WANT me to be heard! and it’s amazing! I realized that one wrong note isn’t going to break me (but a whole slew of them might). and that there is nobody here who doesn’t want me to succeed. Nobody. All of the friends I have made here, are absolutely amazing. We all can support each other (supporting includes constructive criticism) because we are in the same boat. ALL of us. We all are having different challenges since arriving and I am so blessed to be able to support them too. All of my friends from home love me and are rooting for me – and I am rooting for them! Whether they are pursuing a nursing degree, or graphic design or Pre-med or Architecture or Business or whatever – I am SO proud of them, and I know that they are proud of me too. We are all pursuing exactly what we want to be pursuing. My family is

To those reading that think being a music major is easy-  I have something to share with you.

it’s not. It really isn’t.

But I have discovered something in these past two weeks, and that is this: I can do WAY more than I ever thought that I could in my life. I absolutely LOVE what I am doing, and even when it gets hard- it’s worth every single minute of work I put into it. I WANT to stay up late every night doing theory. I WANT to sing for about 3 hours every day (this does not including shower singing and singing in the halls . I even WANT to sit at the keyboard and play major triads and five finger patterns until both my fingers and my brain hurt. I am fully aware that I will probably not make a lot of money when I graduate due to the nature of my field (this is slightly different for me since I am a music therapy Major, but still. There is no way that I am going to make as much as someone who will be a business man/woman or someone who is going to have a title of Doctor. I love what I do. I love being in a place where I can breathe it. I love that I know that I am EXACTLY where God wants me to be! I love the people I have met who are crazy musicians, and artists and dancers. And I think I might be crazy too.

I think this is why music people have a reputation for being crazy. It’s because we ARE. It’s because we are all SO passionate about what we love, that we don’t care how much money we make, or when we’re gonna eat next or what people think about us. I LOVE being able to be crazy!

a couple weeks ago I got up in front of the whole first year arts community in a group, and I danced. Very, very badly. and you know what? I made people laugh. I’ve never been able to just let myself go like that before. and I LOVE it. One of my friends is like that all the time. Just lets himself be goofy and silly all the time. He is one of the kindest people on the planet. And He has taught me this : shrug and make a face like “who cares?”, and then he maybe throws in a weird quote that only your friends get. People either like you or they don’t. and the ones who don’t aren’t worth any of your time. I want people to love me for who I am. Even the slightly crazy parts. and the people who don’t?

Who Cares?

Because I am working really hard at what I love. and I get to be happy doing this for the rest of my life. Even when I’m really stressed – I am still really very happy.

**This blog subject was not assigned by the FACE class**

I am really thankful for my arms.

This is because my arms are what are responsible for giving people hugs.

I want to help people feel something. I think that might be why I am such a huggy touchy-feely person. I want to make others feel good about themselves. I want them to know that they are valued and know that I care about them. A hug just makes you feel better. No matter how good or awful your day was – and no matter if you are a hugger or not.

As far as school goes, grades are very important. However, I am more motivated to do well because I don’t want to dissapoint my professor or my teacher. If I don’t do well, or if I am having a rough time, or I am turning in something a little bit late, I feel bad. Just absolutely awful, because not only am I (a) not learning what I’m supposed to, but I also (b) Am letting down whoever is teaching me. And honestly, option B is more of a motivation that option A. although, I’m not going to lie, getting an A on a test feels pretty darn good.

My goal in my music. I want to make people feel something. I want them to feel happiness, or sadness, or joy, or awe, or anger. An emotion. Anything. Music can be such a release! Once I sang in a christmas recital. I think I might’ve been 13 or 14, maybe 15. I can’t really remember. But, I got up there, and I sang my song, and thought something like “well, that went better than I thought it was going to, I guess it was okay, I am relatively pleased with myself”. And then I looked at my audience of about 15 people. And about 10 of them were crying (including my parents, which I was slightly expecting, since sometimes my Mom cries when I’m having a voice lesson). I, Haley Stead, made someone cry because they thought what I did was beautiful! I didn’t think that that would even be possible for me. To make someone feel something so much that they would have a physical reaction to it.  I love that. Any concert or recital, I want people to feel it like that. I mean I don’t even have to know, but I want them to have that emotional connection to whats happening. I want to wrap them in a giant Hug of music (I am aware that that may be taken as cheesy, but think what you will – it is true).

One of my really good friends, Taylor, said to me “Haley, we could lock you in a room for who knows how long with just water and someone to hug and you’d be ok”. I think she might be right! I mean some food would be nice (I love food) but If I were to have one thing for the rest of my life, it would probably be hugs. I could make people feel good about themselves and feel good about myself at the same time. I would have motivation right there in the room, to make that person -right there- feel something.

My Values.

Honestly, my values are a huge part of who I am and they have a huge influence for what I want to do, and how I act in my everyday life. As a Christian, God is a huge part of my life. I strive to honor him through everything I do, through the way I act, through my language, through the way I treat other people…. everything. This said- I am NOT perfect. I make mistakes, and I know that. I believe God leads me. Actually I know that God leads me. I would not be at SMU without him. I am here solely because his purpose for me is to be here. I would not know myself nearly as well as I do without him. I sing for him. I get to sing for God. I am SO blessed by the people he has brought into my life. I am SO blessed to be where I am. I am SO blessed to have the opportunities that I do. Basically, I am just SO blessed.

I believe that love is one of the most important things in life. Can you imagine a life without love? It would be terrible. I’m not talking strictly romantic love. Although that Is something that I think is beautiful and something that one day I hope I will have – you can love people without being in love with them. I adore my friends. I want to treat them with love. I want to treat my professors with love. I want to treat random people walking down the street with love. I want to treat my craft of music with love. Call me crazy – but I believe that without love the world would be a depressing place to live in. In love comes respect, understanding and trust; and with respect and understanding and trust – you can develop a relationship with that person / group / thing . I believe that everyone should be treated in love- even if they don’t deserve it. Love brings life and light to the darkness of our souls and lights up our hearts for other people to see. You can bring a lot of good to someone by loving them when they don’t deserve it. Often times we ourselves don’t deserve it.

I believe that honesty and truth are two of the most important things in life (besides love). And that as a budding artist (and soon to be a therapist) I think is so important. One of my goals and objectives and great passions in life is to help others. It doesn’t matter what that means, whether I’m carrying something for someone, or listening to them talk about their day, or even their life story. It could just mean giving them a hug. or holding them while they cry. It could mean making them laugh and spending quality time. Sometimes it could even mean leaving them alone. Honesty and Truth are so important for that. I never want to lie to anyone, especially my friends. Even if the truth hurts, I think that you can phrase it in a way where it can be constructive criticism and not an attack on them as a person. I love receiving truth. I love it when people are honest with me and tell me BOTH my strengths AND my weaknesses. Because sometimes when we look at ourselves we can overlook one or the other of these things (or even both)

I believe that music is alive. It does something to your soul. When you look for it – you can tell who has music running through their head all day. You can tell if someone is dreaming up choreography. I think that is such an important part of the human creative process. Having truth and honestly and love while doing your craft is extremely important. You can’t feel it without emotion. If you love it, you can let the musicality run through you. You can feel it run through your body. When you have that much emotion, the only choice you have is to be honest. Honest in your presentation of the music. Honest in how your heart is at the time. Purely Honest.

I feel like this is one of the reasons that Music Therapy is so effective. Music puts you in a place where you have to be honest with yourself. It forces your body as well as your mind and your spirit to align as one and just to FEEL.

I value getting to know somebody for who they are. Nobody should have to pretend. This does NOT mean that I am best friends with everyone I meet or even that I get along well with everyone. It means I value Authenticity. Sometimes I wish I was more like so and so, or did something better like so and so. But at the end of the day … I am ME. and I LOVE being me. I think that its important to love being who you are and to accept yourself for your flaws and for your good attributes. Everyone has things to work on, some people have more to work on than others. Some have more to work on than they themselves even know. I don’t think you ever stop meeting yourself. Even though I know who I am fundamentally, I still find out new things every day. Like the other day I discovered that I need alone time. or that when I’m stressed I write stories. When I moved in with my roommate I discovered that I sleep talk ALOT more than I thought I did.

My Opera Workshop professor Hank Hammett said something to us once that I will never forget. Well actually, he says alot of awesome, quotable and inspiring things; Like “I will never expect you to be generic, but you must never expect that of yourself either” and “The world is a different place now than it was this morning” and “We have learned to guard ourselves and share our hearts with whom we choose”. But I think my favorite is this. “Be Bold. Be Fearless. Be Joyful. and Be Yourself!”

I could write a book on my values because they run into each other. But I think that this just about covers the basics.

I Corinthians 13:13    Now these three remain : Faith, Hope, and Love. But the greatest of these is Love.

“Practice makes perfect.”

But that just isn’t true. Actually I think it might even be a complete lie. I am never completely happy with myself while I’m practicing. I am never happy with every single pitch of every single note. I am never happy with all my emotions that I put into every single song on every single day … not to say that there aren’t days where I am not EXTREMELY happy with what I accomplished. Because there are those, almost every time I practice or perform I am happy with at least 90% of it. But there is always that 10% that could be improved or tweaked in some way to make it that much better.

I love to sing. I sing all the time. So, I guess in a sense one could say that I am constantly practicing. My practice habits at home differ greatly from my practice habits here at SMU. In San Diego I saw my voice coach for an hour twice a week. I would fix coffee and/or Tea for us, we would tell each other what has been going on in our lives for the first 10 minutes in between my warm ups and then I would begin to sing. and we worked and worked and worked until my voice was either so worn down I didn’t want to sing or the rest of the day, or so happy I could’ve sang in front of 3,000,000 people and I would be confident and love every minute of it. Here it’s a little different. I still have my weekly lessons, but I practice on my own more than I do with anyone else. I practice by singing for my friends rather than singing for my coach. My voice coach helps me to refine and improve what I already have, instead of helping me learn the piece from scratch. I have to be more disciplined. Which I actually love – after all I AM here to sing. I cannot believe that I get to say that. I am in SCHOOL to sing. I get to study what I love, and because I love it so much, Its not as much “work”. Sure I have to work at it, and I work very hard, but as my Daddy always says “If you love what you do, you’ll never work a day in your life”.

Singing is like a relationship. You have to work at it – you will never be as good as you want to be without practicing, but it’s rewards are worth all the hard work. Its a two way street- you can’t just expect your voice to be there for you if you don’t take care of it. It is something that you are SO in love with, but it can also frustrate you – you push through with it because it is worth it, because It’s a passion and because, well I guess its just because I love what I do.

Things that help me before a practice are different than the things that help me before a performance. Before practice I love to drink a cold water or a lemonade, whereas before I performance I like to drink hot tea.

My life is a practice room, because I am a work in progress. Not only in my singing but also in my everyday life. I am satisfied with who I am. But I am constantly discovering new things about myself and how I react to certain situations and certain people, and I am currently figuring out life as well as my musical endeavors.

I have always loved to sing- ever since I have been a little kid. When I would play hide and seek with my friends, they could always tell where I was because they would follow the small sweet melodies drifting out from my hiding place. I couldn’t keep it inside.

Singing is something that is ingrained in me. It has become a passionate love, a driving motivation, and most of all- it is part of who I am.

I loved to sing, but for a really long time, I didn’t believe that I could sing. My sister was taking piano lessons from her teacher Susan Lutz – and one day Mrs.Lutz heard me singing- and she thought I had potential. I jumped on the chance for taking voice lessons. I had just stopped learning how to play the harp, and my Mom told me that I had to carry on in some artistic respect. I began taking lessons once a week from Mrs.Lutz and she became my encourager and my teacher-  along with my mentor and my friend. I began to learn the techniques that a classically trained soprano should know – and I fell in love with singing all over again. I worked with Mrs.Lutz for 6 years, and my senior year, I decided that Singing was what I wanted to do for the rest of my life.

I was conflicted about this at first, because one of my goals in life is to help people and I wasn’t exactly sure how I was going to do that with my voice. I considered Physical Therapy, but science is not my forte, I considered Zoology, but that dealt with my other love (Animals) and wasn’t something that I would want to do my entire life.  During the summer before my senior year I discovered Music Therapy. It combined my two great loves- Music and Helping people. I felt like it was a profession that was built for me.

This brings me to present day. I absolutely ADORE the music therapy classes I am taking and the voice program is amazing. I am loving every minute of it. I am so blessed to be surrounded by people who are also here because they love what they do. I am so lucky to be able to go to class and learn things that I am passionate about, I love going to class because I get to sing all day. It is an encouraged thing, creativity is an encouraged thing, and I have the opportunity to refine myself into an instrument and then to use my instrument to benefit others.