Juilliard School

Juilliard School is the setting for Jessica Mastriani’s musical training and a focal point in her uncertainty about what kind of work she wants to do. Although her teachers believe she could join a world-class orchestra, Jessica dislikes the prospect of an orchestral career and finds greater purpose in teaching children to play the flute. The school’s significance lies less in its institutional details, which the narrative does not supply, than in the tension between the professional future associated with her studies and the kind of contribution she begins to choose for herself.

Jessica’s Studies and Expectations

Jessica says she began attending Juilliard School the previous year. When Robert Wilkins asks how she likes school, she gives him a restrained answer rather than admitting that she hates it and has been miserable since starting. Her private reaction establishes a gap between the apparent promise of her education and her lived experience of it: enrollment has not given her a clear sense of direction or satisfaction.

That uncertainty is not simply a rejection of music. Jessica continues to practice and play, but she cannot picture her future in an orchestra. Discussing the usual idea that school is a necessary step toward a career, she tells Ruth that she does not know where she wants to end up and that what little she does know does not involve playing in an orchestra. Juilliard School therefore marks both a sustained commitment to musical study and a path Jessica is reluctant to accept as her destination.

The Orchestral Career in Prospect

Jessica’s mother treats the school as preparation for a conventional success story. She relays that Jessica’s professors believe she could readily become part of a world-class orchestra if she applied herself. In her imagined future, Jessica tours internationally, perhaps playing in Sydney, while Skip works for an investment firm in New York City. She even pictures the two of them sharing an apartment and eventually marrying. This vision makes musical achievement part of a larger family plan, not merely a professional possibility.

Jessica cannot share that enthusiasm. The thought of an orchestral career makes her want to run from the idea, and she has thrown away the speaking-engagement requests her mother forwards about her former psychic ability. The contrast shows that her resistance is not only to one kind of musical work: she is also tired of being assigned a future by other people, whether as a touring musician or as a public representative of a power she no longer has. Juilliard School’s promise of professional advancement thus coexists with Jessica’s refusal to treat prestige or travel as sufficient reasons to pursue a career.

Music Outside the Orchestra

Jessica’s alternative emerges through her summer work with Ruth, who organizes musicians and actors to visit inner-city day-care centers and camps. Because the city cannot afford enough certified teachers, the artists help children put on plays and musicals. Ruth understands the work as making a difference, while Jessica initially doubts that a day-camp play can do much for children facing serious difficulties at home. Bringing Ruth her forgotten wallet interrupts Jessica’s practicing and leads her into the work firsthand.

The experience changes what music can mean to her. Jessica teaches children who have never seen a flute how to play one, and delights in their reaction when she performs fast passages such as “Flight of the Bumblebee” or Tchaikovsky. She tells them that practice can let them do it too, then demonstrates rather than leaving the claim as encouragement alone. The children’s initial disbelief and the moment they see the instrument played turn musical instruction into an immediate exchange: a skill associated with Jessica’s advanced training becomes something she can make accessible to beginners.

A Different Use for Her Training

Ruth argues that a Juilliard School degree would help Jessica teach, even if teaching is not the career Jessica’s mother imagines. Jessica acknowledges the point without resolving her doubts about school or her future. The distinction matters: the degree need not lead to orchestral performance to have practical value. Her musical education can support work that places direct contact with learners ahead of the professional life her family associates with success.

That possibility becomes concrete when Douglas and Tasha invite Jessica to imagine teaching at the proposed Pine Heights Alternative High School. Their plan emphasizes students working at their own pace and replaces a focus on standardized state curriculum with arts including music, drawing, sculpture, drama, and dance. Tasha connects the school to the work Jessica is already doing with Ruth and suggests that she might return to teach there. Juilliard School consequently remains relevant even as Jessica questions the career path attached to it: her training may equip her not only for an orchestra, but also for arts education in a school designed around a different model of learning.