Engineering is a graveyard of musicians

Hi! My name is Camila, and I’ve been a computer engineering student for a year. That’s about as long as I’ve managed to last without completely losing it.

Recently, I got a good job opportunity. I’ll be earning a “decent” salary, definitely much better than my crappy internship, and at first I was really happy. It’s a great opportunity, right? But that feeling didn’t last long.

On the same day I got the offer, I went on Twitter, or X, but I refuse to call it that awful name, just to relax, and a K-pop group showed up on my feed. Don’t get me wrong, I’m 23 now, I hadn’t stanned a group since I was 16. But one of the members had such a unique aura that I got curious, looked her up, watched interviews and a cover she did.

That was a huge mistake.

It ended up opening a Pandora’s box that had been buried deep in my heart for a long time. I think the nostalgia of doing something I loved when I was younger, K-pop groups, reminded me of something else I loved even more, music.

It hit me in a way I can’t even explain. I even went looking for answers in astrology. I saw I have a lot of planets in Aries in my fifth house, maybe that’s why, hahaha. Anyway, all of this was a huge mistake.

I looked again at my guitar, which had been sitting untouched in the corner of my room for so long, and I remembered the indescribable feeling of creating sound, of singing at the top of my lungs and feeling every word deep in my soul.

And honestly, that completely destabilized me. It left me in this limbo of dark and melancholic thoughts.

I remembered a conversation I had with a friend at the beginning of our degree, when we were all still getting to know each other. We all played something and had a deep passion for music, until someone said that engineering is a graveyard of artists. The mood got heavy, I won’t lie, but we started discussing it. We agreed that math is very similar to music in many ways, and someone mentioned that neuroscience says music and math activate similar areas of the brain. I never really looked into it, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s true.

Anyway, the truth is that the more I progress in my computing career, the further I get from my dream of being an artist. I never wanted to be famous like K-pop idols or Ariana Grande, Beyoncé, Sabrina, and others. On the contrary, I’m actually afraid of fame and attention. But I really wanted to work with something connected to my love for music. I feel like I would be happier.

I remember being a teenager and starting to understand reality, the country I live in, the lack of easy opportunities in music, the idea of moving abroad but also my financial situation, the fact that I had no connections in the industry. I never knew where to start, and I definitely didn’t have the courage to put myself out there online and share something so precious to me.

So I slowly let it go.

At first, I stopped playing and singing every day. Then it became something I only did when I needed comfort or wanted to escape from reality. Over time, I learned to find comfort in other things. Nowadays I like talking with my friends to forget my problems. But nothing makes me feel as good as music.

After this whole crisis, realizing that the more I move forward, the further I get from my dream, I went back to my guitar. I cried and cried. I felt my heart warm and comforted in a way I hadn’t felt in years.

And that felt both amazing and terrible at the same time. Because I know what makes me feel good, but I also know I can’t fully stay there. I don’t know how to love music just a little. If I feed that passion, I’m afraid I won’t fulfill my responsibilities, and I’ll always feel uncertain about my future, like I do now.

But at least now I have a job that allows me to support myself :’)