Speaker 1: Pushkin.
Speaker 2: Hey everyone, it's Maya.
Speaker 1: A few years ago I was invited to give a
Speaker 1: commencement address to graduates of the Juilliard School of Music's
Speaker 1: pre college program.
Speaker 2: As an alum.
Speaker 1: It was an honor to share with the new grads
Speaker 1: some lessons I've learned about embracing life's unexpected changes. As
Speaker 1: we enter commencement season and students all over the world
Speaker 1: embark on the next chapter of their lives, I wanted
Speaker 1: to share this speech with you. I really hope you
Speaker 1: enjoy it.
Speaker 2: Please join me in welcoming Maya Shunker.
Speaker 1: Good afternoon everyone, President Wetzel, Provost Meyer, Dean and Director sprat, Map,
Speaker 1: Artistic Director McGill, pre College Artistic Advisor Kaplinsky, distinguished teachers
Speaker 1: and staff, my former conductor Adam Glazer, friends and family,
Speaker 1: and of course, the graduating class.
Speaker 2: Of twenty twenty three.
Speaker 1: I want to congratulate you on this momentous occasion. I
Speaker 1: hope you are filled with pride over what you have
Speaker 1: all achieved. It is one of the greatest honors of
Speaker 1: my life to be invited to give the commencement speech
Speaker 1: at a school that played such a formative role in
Speaker 1: my development. I'll admit I was pretty nervous in the
Speaker 1: lead up to this speech, but then I remember that
Speaker 1: the last time I was on this stage, I had
Speaker 1: to perform Chaikovsky, and now I simply need to speak words.
Speaker 2: Today, I'd love to.
Speaker 1: Share there are three lessons with you that I've learned
Speaker 1: over the years. I'm hoping they might be helpful to
Speaker 1: you as you embark on this next and exciting chapter
Speaker 1: of your lives. For the first lesson, let's travel back
Speaker 1: to when I was six years old when I first
Speaker 1: asked my parents if I could play the violin. My
Speaker 1: three older siblings had opted for the clarinet, the trumpet,
Speaker 1: and the flute, but I was drawn to the violin
Speaker 1: because my grandmother had played it in a traditional Indian
Speaker 1: style as a little girl, and I adored my grandmother.
Speaker 1: I began by learning the Suzuki method, and after a
Speaker 1: year or so, my parents noticed that while they had
Speaker 1: to nudge me to do lots of things, they rarely
Speaker 1: had to remind me to practice the violin.
Speaker 2: I was all in to help nurture my growing passion.
Speaker 1: My mom found a local violinist who was willing to
Speaker 1: take me on as his first ever student.
Speaker 2: His approach was unconventional.
Speaker 1: I never played scales or atudes, or learned proper vibrato
Speaker 1: technique or the right way to shift across the fingerboard. Instead,
Speaker 1: we skipped straight to the joy of playing pieces. I
Speaker 1: simply watched and mimicked, letting my instincts guide me through
Speaker 1: the music. This was my experience until one spring afternoon
Speaker 1: when I was nine years old. My mom and I
Speaker 1: were in New York City for the weekend, and I
Speaker 1: had my violin with me. We walked over to Lincoln
Speaker 1: Center so that I could see Juilliard up close. By
Speaker 1: that point, I knew of Juilliard and the all time
Speaker 1: greats it had helped nurture. Yo Yo Ma and Medori
Speaker 1: had been my favorites. I'd watched a recording of Medori's
Speaker 1: Carnegie Hall recital dozens of times on my living room TV,
Speaker 1: and so as I stood by the entrance of Juilliard
Speaker 1: that day, I felt goosebumps imagining all the remarkable musicians
Speaker 1: who had walked in and out of this building. I
Speaker 1: resolved to practice harder that next day. Suddenly, my mom
Speaker 1: looked at me and said, very matter of factly, Hey,
Speaker 1: why don't we just go in what do you mean
Speaker 1: just go in? I thought she was nuts. What's the
Speaker 1: worst thing that can happen? Maya?
Speaker 2: She asked me.
Speaker 1: I could think of many worst case scenarios that I agreed,
Speaker 1: and within minutes we were in the lobby with my
Speaker 1: mom asking the staff if we could take a look around. There,
Speaker 1: we stuck up a conversation with a young student named
Speaker 1: Nicole and her mom. They were rushing off to the
Speaker 1: fourth floor for a violin lesson with Nicole's teacher, but
Speaker 1: invited us to join them for the elevator rides so
Speaker 1: that we could keep our conversation going. Nicole was studying
Speaker 1: under one of Juilliard's all star professors, doctor Juan bin Im.
Speaker 1: Doctor Im had studied under Dorothy Delay, who, as you
Speaker 1: might know, taught legends like Itsack Pearlman. Just when I
Speaker 1: thought my mom couldn't pull out any more surprises, she
Speaker 1: turned to Nicole's mom with a question, could they kindly
Speaker 1: introduce us to doctor M after their lesson? Amazingly, one
Speaker 1: hour later, I found myself playing the first movement of
Speaker 1: the Bach Violin Concerto for Doctor M. After I finished playing,
Speaker 1: Doctor M expressed what can charitably be described as muted enthusiasm.
Speaker 1: It was clear that while I had strong musical instincts,
Speaker 1: I did not have the technical skills needed to get
Speaker 1: into a place like Juilliard. But he told me that
Speaker 1: he was taking residence at the Aspen Music Festival that
Speaker 1: summer and would be willing to take me on as
Speaker 1: a temporary student to see if we could level up
Speaker 1: my skills in advance of the Juilliard audition in late August.
Speaker 1: I was giddy with excitement. That summer was a total
Speaker 1: game changer for me. Doctor Im was a fantastic teacher.
Speaker 1: He put me through a rigorous boot camp, and after
Speaker 1: hours of intense practice every day for months, I finally
Speaker 1: completed my Juilliard audition. A few weeks later, we got
Speaker 1: a call from doctor Im. Hello, missus Shunker. He said
Speaker 1: to my mom, is there any chance Maya's name is
Speaker 1: actually Anna? My mom politely answered that no, Anna was
Speaker 1: not my name. Doctor In then explained that he had
Speaker 1: received the list of accepted students at Juilliard and a
Speaker 1: certain Anna Shunker had been on the list. I remember
Speaker 1: thinking I'd be happy to go to a court right
Speaker 1: there and then to register a name change. I had
Speaker 1: only lived nine years on this planet as a Maya,
Speaker 1: I could become an Ana if that's.
Speaker 2: What the situation required of me.
Speaker 1: But thankfully Anna turned out to be me, or I
Speaker 1: turned out to be Anna, or whatever the point is,
Speaker 1: someone somewhere had made a typo, and I was able
Speaker 1: to both keep my real name and enroll at Juilliard
Speaker 1: in the fall. This brings us to the first lesson
Speaker 1: I want to share with all of you. It's about
Speaker 1: the power of what you might call imaginative courage. Imaginative
Speaker 1: courage is what my mom modeled for me by envisioning
Speaker 1: a path to Juilliard in the first place. She was
Speaker 1: unafraid to ask the questions that opened up opportunities I
Speaker 1: hadn't imagined for myself. Why don't we just go in?
Speaker 1: What's the worst that can happen? Might it be possible
Speaker 1: to meet doctor M. By the way, I should note
Speaker 1: that my mom is here in the audience today. Hi.
Speaker 2: Mom.
Speaker 1: Feels good to have gotten an actual invite to enter
Speaker 1: the building this day.
Speaker 2: Right when I said earlier.
Speaker 1: That I didn't have a chance of getting into Juilliard
Speaker 1: when I first played for Doctor M that spring day,
Speaker 1: I was not being falsely modest doctor m later confessed
Speaker 1: to my mom that when he first heard me play,
Speaker 1: he also felt my chances or slim, but that he
Speaker 1: quote appreciated Maya's enthusiasm. My mom had created a critical
Speaker 1: opening for me. If she had not taken that bold step,
Speaker 1: I would never have experienced the joy and growth that
Speaker 1: I had here at Juilliard. Some of you here will
Speaker 1: go on to become professional musicians. Others of you may
Speaker 1: become teachers, or doctors or activists.
Speaker 2: Your paths will develop.
Speaker 1: And change, and there will be times when it seems
Speaker 1: like what you want and hope for does not exist
Speaker 1: or isn't possible. But this is when you can call
Speaker 1: on your Juilliard training. A good musician knows that there
Speaker 1: is more to a great performance than simply playing the
Speaker 1: notes on the page. They know how to bring forth
Speaker 1: beauty and create feeling based not on what's there yet,
Speaker 1: but what they have imagined in their minds. As musicians,
Speaker 1: you all know how to look beyond the page, and
Speaker 1: life will requireire more of this same imagination. Years after
Speaker 1: my time at Juilliard, I ended up getting my PhD
Speaker 1: in cognitive science, where I study the science of human
Speaker 1: behavior and decision making. I realized that rather than work
Speaker 1: in a lab, which was the expected path, I wanted
Speaker 1: to use my knowledge to improve how we designed government
Speaker 1: programs and policies so that they could better serve people.
Speaker 1: But there was no such position available to apply for,
Speaker 1: and so I did for myself what my mom had
Speaker 1: once done for me. I asked questions and took a
Speaker 1: bold step. Why don't I just go in? What's the
Speaker 1: worst that can happen? I sent a cold email to
Speaker 1: an advisor in the Obama White House asking if they'd
Speaker 1: be willing to create a new position for someone with
Speaker 1: my training and ideally.
Speaker 2: Hire me for the role.
Speaker 1: Days later, I was interviewing with the White House and
Speaker 1: they ended up hiring me. My years working in public
Speaker 1: policy ended up being some of the most rewarding and
Speaker 1: impactful of my life, and they wouldn't have happened if
Speaker 1: I hadn't been inspired by my mom to imagine something
Speaker 1: beyond the existing page.
Speaker 2: Okay, now back to my story with the violin.
Speaker 1: After I was accepted at Juilliard, my life assumed a
Speaker 1: new rhythm. Every Saturday, my mom and I would wake
Speaker 1: up at four thirty in the morning to catch a
Speaker 1: train from Connecticut to New York so I could take
Speaker 1: part in a full day of classes. You all know
Speaker 1: the drill, private lessons, orchestra music theory, ear training, scale class, masterclasses,
Speaker 1: chamber music, and of course gossiping about who got what
Speaker 1: part and who we had crushes on. By the way, Shunseegesato,
Speaker 1: if you ever hear this, I recently discovered diary entries
Speaker 1: about you, in which I wrote things like, oh my god,
Speaker 1: he is so good.
Speaker 2: At the violin.
Speaker 1: We could play a duet at our wedding, but he'd
Speaker 1: definitely be the first violin part. All my Juilliard training
Speaker 1: began to pay off. I started winning concerto competitions and
Speaker 1: soloing with orchestras in the Juilliard Pre College Orchestra. The
Speaker 1: distance between Shunseke's concert master chair and my chair began
Speaker 1: to decrease. When I was thirteen, it saw Pearlman invited
Speaker 1: me to be his private violin student. Mister p as
Speaker 1: we affectionately called him, gave me the vote of confidence
Speaker 1: I needed to start believing I might be able to
Speaker 1: go pro one day. But then one summer morning, when
Speaker 1: I was fifteen, I was at the Pearlman Music Program
Speaker 1: practicing Paganini's challenging.
Speaker 2: Caprice number thirteen.
Speaker 1: I was struggling to get this one passage right and
Speaker 1: I overstretched my finger on a single note.
Speaker 2: I heard a pop.
Speaker 1: It was not a string that had popped, but a
Speaker 1: tendon in my hand. For months, I remained in denial
Speaker 1: about my injury. I continued to play through pain until
Speaker 1: the pain got so severe I needed surgery, and when
Speaker 1: that wasn't successful, doctors finally told me I had to
Speaker 1: stop playing altogether. I found myself grieving not just the
Speaker 1: loss of the instrument, but also the loss of myself.
Speaker 1: If I was in an airport without a violent strap
Speaker 1: around my shoulder, it felt like I was missing a limb.
Speaker 1: The violin had defined me for so long, and without it,
Speaker 1: I felt stuck. I would later learn that this experience
Speaker 1: is known as identity paralysis, and it happens to a
Speaker 1: lot of us when we experience unexpected, unwanted change, who
Speaker 1: we think we are and what we're about is suddenly
Speaker 1: called into question. Ultimately, I found my way again as
Speaker 1: a cognitive scientist, but this formative experience with change seated
Speaker 1: a curiosity in me about how we as humans navigate
Speaker 1: the big changes in our lives and reckon with the
Speaker 1: shifts and self identity that often accompany them. It's a
Speaker 1: topic I've been exploring over the past few years on
Speaker 1: my podcast, A Slight Change of Plans, where I marry
Speaker 1: science and storytelling to help give us better tools for
Speaker 1: handling life's twists and turns. Making this show inspired me
Speaker 1: to revisit my own relationship with the violin. I realized
Speaker 1: that what I missed most about playing the violin was
Speaker 1: that it had given me a vehicle for connecting emotionally
Speaker 1: with others. It turned out that this was at the
Speaker 1: root of my passion for music, and a hopeful message
Speaker 1: emerged from this insight. While I had lost the ability
Speaker 1: to play the violin, I could still find this underlying
Speaker 1: love of human connection in other pursuits. This brings us
Speaker 1: to the second lesson I've learned. We can anchor our
Speaker 1: identities not to what we do.
Speaker 2: But why we do it.
Speaker 1: Thinking of our identities in this way can make us
Speaker 1: more resilient in the face of change. As you imagine
Speaker 1: your future, ask yourself what drives you to do the
Speaker 1: things you love, what really lights you up about them?
Speaker 1: Connecting emotionally with people is what makes me tick. For you,
Speaker 1: it might be a love of storytelling, or learning new things,
Speaker 1: or challenging yourselves or helping others. Whatever it is, remember
Speaker 1: this can help you feel grounded during periods of uncertainty,
Speaker 1: guiding you towards your next steps while still retaining the
Speaker 1: core of who you are. The third and final lesson
Speaker 1: that I've learned is to make space for awe. I
Speaker 1: remember one night when I was twelve and at the
Speaker 1: Aspen Music Festival. I was lying in bed in the dark,
Speaker 1: listening to recording of Ams Sophie Mutter playing the Beethoven
Speaker 1: Violin Concerto on my Discman, you see, there are these
Speaker 1: things called sa that we once listened to Class of
Speaker 1: twenty twenty three. My heart raced along with the melody,
Speaker 1: and I felt shivers down my spine during certain phrases.
Speaker 1: I was simply awestruck by how beautiful the music was
Speaker 1: and how it made me feel. But as I got older,
Speaker 1: there were many moments when I lost sight of how
Speaker 1: extraordinary music is. Especially in my teens, I became a
Speaker 1: far more self conscious musician, fearful of how my peers
Speaker 1: would judge my playing, envious of those who seemed to
Speaker 1: play effortlessly and burdened by the competitive nature of performance.
Speaker 1: My constant mental chatter focused on all the wrong stuff,
Speaker 1: muted the awe and then, as you know, I.
Speaker 2: Stopped being able to play. A few years after my.
Speaker 1: Injury, I was diagnosed with juvenile rheumatoid arthritis. This fully
Speaker 1: ended any hope that the violin might still be a
Speaker 1: part of my future.
Speaker 2: But then something else happened.
Speaker 1: One day in graduate school, I learned that I had
Speaker 1: been misdiagnosed. I could stop taking the immunosuppressant drugs and
Speaker 1: anti inflammatories that had been a staple of my day
Speaker 1: to day life for six years up.
Speaker 2: Until that point.
Speaker 1: A week later, I received a phone call the organizers
Speaker 1: of an academic conference I was slated to attend in
Speaker 1: South Africa that summer let me know that they had
Speaker 1: a surprise guest of honor, the violinist Joshua Bell, and
Speaker 1: they wanted to know if I'd like to perform the
Speaker 1: back double with him.
Speaker 2: They had no idea.
Speaker 1: That it had been years since I picked up my violin,
Speaker 1: or that I had so much scar tissue built up
Speaker 1: in my hand. I realistically only had a concert or
Speaker 1: two left in me period.
Speaker 2: I wanted this to be one of them.
Speaker 1: That night, I performed with Josh Bell on an outdoor
Speaker 1: stage under a starry sky in South Africa. In the
Speaker 1: middle of the second movement, when the two violins sing
Speaker 1: in unison, an old familiar feeling returned. My heart raced
Speaker 1: and I was in awe of the music. How lucky
Speaker 1: are we as humans to be moved by music? It
Speaker 1: is remarkable that a collection of musical notes arranged just
Speaker 1: so can bring us to tears. Whether it's the Beethoven
Speaker 1: Emperor Concerto or Taylor Swift's all too well ten minute version,
Speaker 1: I mean, it is really great. Feelings of awe can
Speaker 1: help us tap into better versions of who we are
Speaker 1: as humans. Research shows that in the presence of awe,
Speaker 1: we focus less on ourselves and more on others. We
Speaker 1: become more generous, and we're more inclined to feel that
Speaker 1: we are part of something bigger than ourselves. Today, as
Speaker 1: you celebrate what you have achieved and you begin to
Speaker 1: anticipate the joys and challenges that lie ahead, remember to
Speaker 1: practice imaginative courage. Remember that who you are is far
Speaker 1: richer than you may think, and seek out awe because
Speaker 1: it can inspire you to connect with the best parts
Speaker 1: of yourselves. I cannot wait to see the impact you
Speaker 1: each have on this world.
Speaker 2: Congrats again and thank you so much.
Speaker 1: I really hope that you enjoyed this commencement address. I'd
Speaker 1: love to hear from you about the best life advice
Speaker 1: you've been given. Share your thoughts with us at slight
Speaker 1: Change at Pushkin dot fm. That's Slight Change at Pushkin
Speaker 1: dot fm. And of course we'll be back in a
Speaker 1: week with a fresh episode of a slight Change of Plans.
Speaker 1: I'll see you then,