I have put together and checked a significant number of clarinets in the time I have been working with instruments. But after yesterday I realize that I have been, well, unprofessional. That is to say, the tolerance for error that is upheld in this school makes progress exceedingly slow. Everything has to be perfect. No "play" in the keys, no unevenness in the pad cups, no burns or scars or bending. Everything has to be perfect.
I would probably say that this stringency frustrates me, but at the same time I appreciate the amount of attention to detail that must be upheld in any profession where one is working with mechanics, or any job with a professional standard at all. This is not working at a cash register or in the back of a store. It requires professional standards that must be upheld sometimes to degrees that may seem insane (and, of course, frustrating), to anyone attempting to learn it.
Frustration is a natural response to all this. It is what drives one to deal with the situation in a manner that relieves tension. Sometimes the attention to detail just has to be dealt with by the person attending to it.
Fixing instruments is going to be a long game for me. I have forty-seven weeks to go in this program, and what I am doing now is the easy stuff. I know I can handle this if I put effort into it, but at the same time, I am preparing to run into something that may hold me back.
In any profession, it is attention to detail that matters. I think I have many things to learn if I am to uphold this standard.
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