How do you handle success?

This was originally written as an email to my students

My former student Collin Holloway - Who has handled success VERY well. Super proud.

How Do You Handle Success?

Over the years as an educator, I have experienced just about everything: joy, grief, failure, and success.

Strangely, success has almost always felt like a surprise to me. Not because I didn’t work for it, but because I’ve always known how fragile it is. In this field especially, things can change overnight. Opportunities appear, disappear, and sometimes return in completely different forms.

That awareness has served me well. It keeps me working. It keeps me grateful. And it reminds me that nothing is guaranteed.

Many people, however, live with a quiet assumption of permanence. They believe that if they do a good job today, the opportunity will still be there tomorrow—that the door that opened once will open again, and that their rise is inevitable.

But the truth is: it isn’t.

One of the clearest indicators I see in my students—the biggest green or red flag for their future—is not how they handle failure. It’s how they handle success.

When something goes well—a performance, a competition, an audition—what happens next?

Do you begin to look down on your peers? Do you assume the work is finished? Do you start to believe that the success itself proves something permanent about who you are?

Or do you become more gracious? More grateful? More aware that you are part of something larger than yourself?

Success reveals character. It magnifies who you already are.

But success also reveals pain. It can expose old wounds you thought were long behind you. For some, success brings a quiet temptation: the feeling that you can finally mirror the mistreatment you once experienced. The harsh teacher, the dismissive colleague, the friend who tried to diminish you—when you finally have some power, it can feel strangely satisfying to pass that same behavior along.

Success can also awaken something more personal: the desire for validation. The hope that now the parent, professor, or “friend” who never fully believed in you will finally see you differently.

But chasing that kind of validation is a trap. The applause fades. The approval rarely arrives in the way we imagine. And building your identity around it leaves you permanently hungry.

The musicians who endure—the ones who build real lives in music—learn something different. They refuse to pass along the harm they experienced. They become the colleague they wish they had. The teacher they once needed. The artist who creates space rather than scarcity.

Success gives you a choice. You can repeat the past, or you can repair it.

We are currently at a moment where our own star is rising. Our program is regaining a sense of national presence and recognition. That can feel exciting—and it should. But moments like this carry a subtle danger: success can slowly distort our sense of reality. It can make us believe our own mythology.

Recognition, prestige, reputation—none of these mean very much unless they increase our capacity to do good in the world. If success only inflates our ego but does not deepen our generosity, strengthen our community, or expand what we are able to give, then we have misunderstood what success is for.

The truth is that a confluence of a million factors has brought us together. Each of you carries your own story, your own struggles, and your own moments of courage that made it possible for you to be here.

I am incredibly proud of who you are.

So in that spirit—of sincerity, humility, and infinite possibility—I leave you with a simple question:

What’s next?