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# 10 years after CapU jazz, here are 10 things I've learned
- URL: https://www.rhythmchanges.ca/10-years-capu/
- Published: 2022-09-23T13:00:00.000Z
- Updated: 2025-12-10T22:35:26.000Z
- Description: I enrolled back in September 2012
- Author: Will Chernoff
- Tags: Subscriber Fridays

I've been thinking about (and enjoying with friends) how this September marked ten years since I enrolled at Capilano University's jazz program for a year, back in September 2012.

In a follow-up to [this early piece](https://www.rhythmchanges.ca/favourite-quote-capu-jazz/), let's explore ten things I've learned – though perhaps I've learned wrongly! – since then.

1)

**Attending CapU jazz won't often lead to working in the music business' private sector**, with one exception; teaching lessons at music lesson studios.

2)

**Going there did help me work in the public arts sector**, as I got [my first job in music](https://www.rhythmchanges.ca/claude-giguere-north-shore-celtic-ensemble-ep-24/) from a posting on the bulletin board in the Fir building, days before dropping out. And of course, many people find work as teachers/instructors/faculty/*etc*. after graduating from Cap and from UBC's Dual Degree Program. That's the main track.

3)

**Nobody knows or cares that I dropped out** unless we've already been friends. I've had conversations at gigs this year where suddenly someone asks me, "What year did you graduate?" (Or once, to my great enjoyment, "What year *are you*?")

4)

**Enrolling at age 17 was bad for me**; waiting probably two years would have drastically improved my experience in the program. I was too young. David Blake and I discuss this on [our podcast episode](https://www.rhythmchanges.ca/david-blake-the-tangent-cafe-era-s-1-ep-6/), at around 38 minutes in.

5)

**I played *less* as a CapU student than I've done at any other point in my career**. Less time on the instrument, more time commuting from New West to North Van and doing dumb teenager stuff. This probably would've changed if I stayed to graduate, but it's striking when looking back. Isn't that supposed to be the time where you play the most? Even in high school I had spent more time practicing and playing.

6)

**I have this conceit that I didn't need to go at all**. Here are peers whom I had already met and played with, pre-CapU: Meghan Gilhespy, Madeleine Elkins, Miles Wong, Thad Bailey-Mai, Jonny Tobin, Will Clements, Julian Jayme (if you meet Julian, you meet everybody!), Jenny Xu, the Skepasts brothers... lots.

On the other hand, my best friends *made* on campus would be Parker Woods, Chris Fraser, Carson Tworow, and... then everyone after that, we met after I dropped-out.

So did I *really* need to go for the networking? My heart says no, I had my foot in the door already. Maybe that's vain but I do feel it.

7)

**My peers and I enrolled into a generational dip**. And we didn't know it; we just thought that barren was the natural state.

I had no idea that we were at the bottom of the recorded music industry's great depression (\~2001-2015), that so few venues stayed open through the early 2010s and at one point we had no Cory Weeds club *and* no Tangent yet. Yikes! I tell every younger fan I can that there's more happening on the scene today than I've witnessed before.

8)

**The Chad model**. By my recollection, there were seven bass players in my freshman class; and only one of us, Chad, graduated in a contiguous period of time. The rest of us dropped out and/or returned later to graduate.

Chad had probably never played jazz before enrolling out of a North Van high school.

The Chad model is what CapU really excels at; taking someone who's willing to put in the work as a student of their instrument, from any and all backgrounds whether close to jazz or not, and bringing them into this world.

9)

**There's no way it makes financial sense to go**. I can only recommend it to people who *really* want to teach music in school as their main career outcome. Fortunately I had scholarships on my way into CapU, but I'm deeply skeptical that the tuition wouldn't have been better spent on a mix of things: private lessons, going to gigs, making some records/videos...

Some of my friends joked (probably) for a while that I had left because I "was too good for" CapU. This hurt me to hear. It didn't fit my experience at all; in fact I left feeling ashamed of how poorly I had fit with the culture and the program.

It took ten years of real-world career, from working up through a tiny nonprofit to launching a band to writing and podcasting to getting a record label job, to move on and realize that I had broken up with CapU like many *people* break up; we drifted apart as we grew to understand how different our goals truly were.

10)

**I have no regrets.** I still think about CapU fondly all the time.