When I was back in my hometown of Houston, Texas, for spring break, I met with my AP English literature teacher from high school for coffee. My teacher, like me, was a serious pianist growing up, and during our conversation, I recounted my personal experience with Georgetown University’s music community.
I left Georgetown’s music department after my first semester because the environment mirrored what my teacher and I discussed: There seems to be a near-universal culture of cutting people down in classical music. However, this phenomenon does not solely apply to classical music. Too often, I’ve seen Georgetown students in various contexts tear each other apart as a product of the competitive atmosphere we maintain. This culture of knocking our peers down is a direct contradiction of the university’s values of justice and promoting the common good. As Georgetown students, we must do better in upholding the values that set our university apart by revising our culture of criticism.
During my first semester at Georgetown, my co-curricular activities revolved entirely around music. I took a chamber music course, competed in the GU Orchestra’s concerto competition and wrote the music for a Mask & Bauble production. It was a lot of work, but not a major jump from what I was doing in the pre-college program at Rice University in high school. At Rice pre-college, I was grilled on stage during masterclasses by tenured professors and once had my piano teacher call me in for an emergency lesson immediately after my performance. Still, at Georgetown, I received an unprecedented amount of destructive criticism from both my peers and professors.
As a first-year composing music for a major student theater production, I already faced a tall order. While I received excellent support from the directing staff, the instrumentalists repeatedly tore my score apart, giving unsolicited critiques in front of other musicians and directing staff. My musical decisions were publicly belittled, which made me question my competence as a musician.
I had a similar experience in the Chamber Music Ensembles Program (CMEP), a classical music performance class at Georgetown, except the source of my public humiliation was a professor. During dress rehearsal, when I didn’t deliver the verbal introduction to my performance the exact way the professor wanted, the professor interrupted me after every sentence and angrily told me to rewrite my speech in front of the entire class. In hindsight, I realize that my speech did not follow the professor’s instructions, but the way he publicly criticized me felt unnecessary and unprofessional.
My experience in the music community at Georgetown is reflective of the Hilltop’s larger culture of destructive criticism. Last semester, in my “Financial Accounting” class, I overheard a group of club leaders discussing the applications they received for their clubs. I was appalled by how callously they knocked their own peers in public. I saw them crowding around one student’s computer as she scrolled through Google Forms responses and said to the group, “Yeah, we’re not letting her in.”
What is particularly ironic about the incident is that they were evaluating applications for a pre-professional club, but the way they publicly discussed what was supposed to be private information was grossly unprofessional. This was on top of the fact that the language they used was hurtful and not constructive at all.
When people say that criticism is necessary for growth, they refer to constructive criticism, not the kind of criticism that we see too often at Georgetown. Remarks like, “Yeah, we’re not letting her in” or picking at the flaws in one’s work without an actionable recommendation are not only hurtful, but they also don’t help people improve. There’s no point in making these comments because there’s no tangible benefit.
A common counterargument made when people speak out against the culture of destructive criticism at Georgetown is that they are not tough enough to endure the “real world” or the “corporate world.” However, while the real world may be harsh, this is an extremely dismissive response that glosses over the core issue: that destructive criticism is wholly unnecessary for our intellectual development. If Georgetown students truly care about becoming productive citizens, we must combat this norm that ultimately harms our productivity.
Julia Nguyen is a sophomore in the School of Foreign Service. This is the fourth installment of her new column, “The Stories That Cultures Tell.”
