How Student Athlete Opera Singer Defines a College Life - Dan street

Erik: How did attending Rice University fuse your passions for music, academics and sports? Dan: Coming out of high school I had a deluded dream that I was going to be able to be the athletic opera singer, who also got straight A’s [laughs] and I thought that I was going to do that forever [laughs] and I was wrong. [laughs] So, I got to Rice thinking that I was going to do all three. Music is an intense, intense discipline, partially because you’ve got the music theory and the music history and all those things, but you’ve also got a ton of performance requirements. You got to be on stage a certain amount of hours per week, you’ve got to do choral requirements all those and performances which are weekends, nights, whatever. So, I was fully immersed in that and on top of that I really wanted to get two or three majors, because I wanted to explore the academic side of the university, so I started as major in economics and political science, all in I was taking between 21 and 25 hours each semester, which is double almost triple the load of what some people take, right? So, I was strapped for time and running around in circles and I tried to add on top of that playing sports. So, I tried [Laughs] and I knew going into college that I wanted to do this, but I tired playing basketball and baseball and I tried trying out for sports teams, the track team and things like that. And I quickly found out that, like I told you earlier, everyone has their level and my level was quickly reached [laughs]. Erik: Was this in basketball? Dan: In basketball especially, I mean, I thought I was good. Man, you know I’m 6’5 and relatively coordinated but these guys would just jump over my head [laughs] you know? Shoot better than I would, more coordinated, you know when you find someone better than you and every single guy there was better than me [laughs] So, so yeah. So, I ended up backing off that and really focusing on the music, academics and things like that.