Does anyone have a story of taking unbelievably hard classes, yet marching in a corps?

I will be trying to become a pharmacist and it's going to be a big challenge trying to balance my grades and DCI (if I make it).

I had to handle something like that.

I got my double major in Chemical engineering and Biomedical engineering at Carnegie Mellon (they're sort of a big deal in the engineering world) in 4 years. Somehow, I managed to finish in time by taking ~17 credits/semester and have a GPA hovering between 3.0-3.5 while doing the college's marching band for the first 2 years, indoor for all 4 years, drum corps for the last 2 years, and teching at a HS for the last 2 years.

My weekday schedule went something like this: practice room at 6am every morning before my 8am classes, class all day, work for a few hours, then studying/homework until I passed out. Repeat. Fairly depressing, but I needed to get everything done because Friday night to Sunday night were completely devoted to rehearsals. Sometimes indoor camps overlapped with corps camps so there were a few times when I would get a ride out to my corps camp 7 hours away, and fly back early Sunday morning to be at ensemble for indoor. And appropriately enough, I actually missed the first day of move-in for my ageout year because I was graduating.

That being said, once you start going to drum corps camps, you'll realize that this is a VERY common story among the college kids there. Some people would bring homework to camp and work on it after lights out. I can think of lots of people off the top of my head who I marched with who were in the same boat, doing engineering or some other crazy major. It's possible - it just takes a lot of work.

So, my advice to you is do whatever makes you happy. Doing all those percussion ensembles at the same time was my stress reliever from the academic stuff so it worked for me. And you don't HAVE to finish college in 4 years if you decide to spread out your classes. I'm in the minority. You have the rest of your life to get a degree and work, but only a limited time to march. Also, once I learned to not stress about grades too much, I was less crazy. I didn't finish with the best GPA in the world, but I still got into medical school afterwards. Good luck to ya...

Patty's right. Gotta do what makes you happy. I always found that my GPA tended to be higher when I was the busiest. Study, work, teach, play, sleep,...rinse and repeat. Once I was done with competitive playing my grades dropped. Not dramatically but they were still lower. I've always thought the reason was because I had much more time on my hands.

The trick is planning your schedule so it works for you. I obviously didn't have the mental capacity to tackle anything remotely close to what Patty did nor did my undergrad institution carry the reputation of an academic powerhouse such as Carnegie Mellon but college is college. You'll have easier semesters and you'll have difficult ones. You just have to learn how to budget time for everything in your life.

Nice nice, wow thank you guys for the stories. I now feel less overwhelmed (especially after hearing about double majoring in chemical engineering and biomedical engineering!!).

I love love love drumming, and hearing stuff like this really makes me glad.

You'll never know until you try.
My old section leaders both marched SCV Bassline while taking classes at UCLA as full time students (they had to fly back every weekend to go to camps at one point)
Not easy classes either, both mechanical engineering majors.
One of them pushed himself really hard and did very successfully, I believe he had a 3.9 GPA (which is very impressive for even normal engineers, let alone drum corps participants)

I was never sure how the other guy turned out, he transferred schools in the end and he said drum corps really made college a lot harder.

I myself was supposed to be in PC for this summer but I regret not being nearly as capable as my friends. In the end I had to pick school over drum corps. In retrospect, if I were younger I'd probably have had an easier time since the classes didn't become so demanding until recently.

You'll find out if you try, no use worrying about it until it actually happens.

You'll never know unless you try.

My boyfriend marched the past four years with Pacific Crest (two in the pit, two as drum major), and just graduated with a double major in two completely unrelated fields (music and political science), as well as two minors in education in those respective fields. He also was the chief justice on the university judicial board, marched RCC winter and Pulse at different points, taught two high schools, and was a member of a professional fraternity. He still graduated in four years even with all that other stuff mixed in.

So yeah, it's possible, but you'll definitely have to push yourself.

Wow, now I definitely know that it is possible haha. It's really cool hearing all these stories of people finding time for practicing even though they are busy. What I don't get is, how do they afford to pay for all these indoor lines and corps as a college student (which in my opinion, the time when a person is the poorest)???

I think the financial situation varies pretty greatly from person to person. My boyfriend's activities actually kind of balanced out (he got paid for judicial board and the two high schools, and that pretty much paid for corps); although his parents paid for tuition. Some other people I know literally wrote out 50 or 60 letters to everyone they knew asking for sponsorship (and were able to raise either all their corps fees that way or at least a good chunk of them). And of course, some people are just damn lucky and their parents manage to pay every cent. =P

I had a work-study that paid about $10/hour, and I'd work maybe 15 hours/week. That covered indoor. I was lucky in that my parents and extended family agreed to pay for my drum corps tuition - all $1800/year. And it may sound like some messed up thinking, but the way that we figured it was, I was already borrowing $30,000/year for my college tuition - what's another $2000? I'll have the rest of my life to make money.

I also worked the 3 previous summers and 2 previous school years by teaching bands, doing a work study, and having a summer paid research internship. I had saved a lot of money from that in order to pay for my apartment, utilities, and transportation to camps. It only worked because I didn't have any car or insurance payments, I was allergic to shopping, and I raided my parents' house for food and laundry. It sucked, but it was so worth it and I'd do it all over again.