A Letter to Georgetown Student Musicians and Artists

Dear Young Stars,

There is a rhythm to this place that you begin to absorb without noticing. It moves quickly, with purpose, carrying you from one obligation to the next, until even your pauses feel scheduled. Somewhere along the way, what once felt open begins to narrow, and the life you imagined for yourself starts to take on a different shape.

And in that quiet shift, I wonder—

Torn between the urgency of a pre-professional culture and the fervent hope to establish a creative, independent path, have you been able to sneak in a breath away from this tension? Amid resources that are abundant for policy, finance, and global affairs, yet far less bountiful for the arts, have you been able to design the education you once imagined for yourself? Surrounded by global institutions composed of cold, white marble, have you created a shelter warm enough to protect the dream you carried here? 

In my four years at Georgetown, I could never free myself entirely from these struggles. I moved through recruiting cycles, and now I find myself months away from a position in finance in New York. It is not easy to set aside the weight of family hopes or the uncertainty of a job market.

And yet when I close my laptop, almost without thinking, I reach for my flute, piccolo, EWI (Electronic Wind Instrument), or microphone. There is a rhythm that insists on being followed. My body recognizes it before I do, and I find myself moving, drawn back to the dance studio, practicing street dance until the music settles somewhere deeper. At night, when everything quiets, the questions return. I lie awake, thinking about how non-Western musicians might shape a truly global sound—how their voices might travel, resonate, transform what is heard and valued. And beneath all of this, there is a growing desire: not just to understand, but to create. To compose, to give form to these thoughts, and to send them outward into a world I am still learning how to reach.

There is still a long journey between where I am and the musician I hope to become, both in technical and creative skills. This is work that unfolds over a lifetime, and I take a quiet pride in having stayed with it. Despite the constraints, the lack of resources, and the many pressures that could have pulled me away, I did not let go. As everything else shifted with time, I held on to what felt most essential: my commitment to music, and the part of myself that continues to believe in it.

Perhaps that is why I have held onto it so tightly. As an international student who left home alone at thirteen, I have lived through moments when distance, loneliness, and the absence of support made everything seem almost insurmountable. And yet, each time, it was this same dream that remained. Ethereal, distant, almost intangible—a belief that one day, somehow, music will become the life I am reaching toward. I could not let it end there. I would find myself returning to a single thought: what if it does come true? That question was enough for me to survive through the endless darkness.

So keep building up your dream, my fellow musicians and artists! You are never alone. What I have come to realize is that the arts at Georgetown do not disappear—they hide. They exist in scattered backyards, late-night rehearsals, small ensembles, and conversations that feel too alive to be institutionalized. They require effort to find, but once you do, they sustain you.

I am deeply grateful for those spaces and people: Professor Paul Bratcher, whose humor and professionalism transformed jazz into something borderless; Professor Anthony DelDonna, who opened me up to the expansive depths of classical music with both rigor and care; my fellow writers at The Georgetown Independent, with whom ideas about art are discussed and analyzed seriously; and my jazz combo, where we improvise without the restrictions of time and space and music becomes something shared rather than performed. These are the places where I felt most alive. These groups and people compose my most precious memories at Georgetown. 

It is easy, in a place like this, to begin negotiating with yourself. To say: just for now, I will set this aside, and I will return to it later, when things are more certain, more stable, more earned. But what you set aside does not wait unchanged. It quiets. It recedes. It asks for less, until one day it asks for nothing at all. So if there is something you carry—a sound, a rhythm, a way of thinking—stay with it. You may not know what it will become. You may not even need to. It is enough that it is yours.

There are many ways to live a life. Many that are sensible, apparent, easy to explain. But there is also a life that feels, at certain moments, unmistakably like your own. It does not arrive all at once. It gathers, slowly, in the choices you repeat.

And now, those choices matter even more. We live in a time of uncertainty, of constant conflict, of a world repeatedly reshaped by technologies like AI. It becomes easy to question whether what we create still holds value. But genuine creation is not just about output—it is about existence. What is most human in art is not perfection, but the longing to express, the hope to be understood, and the enduring pursuit of beauty.

And sometimes, it begins with nothing more than this:

you did not stop.

Best wishes,

Wendi

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Wendi Wang is a senior in the SFS majoring in International Economics and minoring in Philosophy and Music. She is the Managing Editor of the Indy.