"Do not be afraid of anything."

This week’s interview is with my good friend Ruth Eldredge, an organ performance grad student in the School of Music. Ruth grew up in Colorado, the ninth of ten children. She received her bachelor’s degree in organ performance, and went on to study musicology at Oxford. But for as long as I’ve known Ruth, I never knew that when she started college, she had very different plans for her life! I’ll let her tell the story…

MHR: When you first started college, what was your plan, for your education, career, family?

RE: Oh, I had everything planned. Down to the T. I was going to come to BYU, major in linguistics, then go to medical school, because I wanted to run pediatric neuro-surgery clinics in Central America. I figured I’d start learning the languages, and then go to

medical school, and spend a lot of time overseas building clinics, maybe even a medical school in Central America. That’s what I wanted to do. And I had every expectation of being married by the time I was twenty… partly so I wouldn’t have to decide whether to go on a mission!

Anyway, I was going to drive a gold SUV, and be a neurosurgeon. I worked in a doctor’s office my freshman year and I remember driving home and pretending that I was in my SUV—I was actually in this really ugly two-toned truck. So, I was pretending that I was calling my kids on my cell phone and telling them I was on my way to pick them up from school.

MHR: Ruth, what a cute freshman you were! So how did you get from this plan to majoring in organ performance?

It came on gradually. I taught myself to play the organ when I was thirteen because I got called to be the ward organist. But I didn’t have any lessons until I got to college, and it was partially because I had decided that I was going to medical school, and I was done playing piano, I wouldn’t have time it was too stressful, I never thought I was that good at it, and so that was enough for me. Time to get on to real life. But I remember one time talking to my uncle my freshman year and I asked him if he had any advice as I was going to college, and he said, “You’re not going to understand this now, but make music an important part of your life.” He didn’t know me well, I don’t think he even knew I played the organ. But I remember thinking, “Yeah, that’s important”… to the point where I thought, ok, I can’t take music out of my life completely. But I was too scared to do piano, I wasn’t really that into it, so I decided to take this organ class. There was a professor on campus that I’d heard of and really wanted to get to know, so I decided to take his organ class. And it wasn’t so much learning to play the organ, it was more learning what stops to use in organ music, which I knew nothing about. It got me thinking this was something I needed to try. I had some unfinished business with music. So I took four organ lessons, tried out for the school of music, and got in. At first I did all the pre-med classes alongside the music classes. Then in my third year, when I was twenty, and I kind of had an awakening moment: I needed to give music a really good go, I needed to make it top priority and see what happens. I jettisoned the pre-med, and with that off my mind, other things started coming, and that’s when I decided to go on a mission. I served a mission in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

MHR: So you went from your plan of medical school, to music and majoring in organ, then on a mission. Tell me the story of how you ended up going to Oxford.

It comes back to the people, every time. I started playing the organ because of the professor, and when I got home from my mission, I got into some history classes because some friends had introduced me, and I started working with some of the history professors. I really enjoyed the intellectual environment of history, looking at the way we’ve thought about the past, and how that really affects out future. I think what we see and how we think on a day to day basis is heavily influenced by the past, and by what other people have induced us to see. Coming to an awareness of that made me want to start rethinking the way I thought about the world: Are there things in our history or in our past that we’ve been missing, or are there things that we’ve said are ok, or are status quo that really don’t have to be or really shouldn’t be? So I got into history that way, and then I wrote an Honors Thesis that got me into musicology. I had done well in my music analysis and history classes in the music school, and I really like to take things apart, I’ve got a pretty good puzzle mind. So trying to piece together what makes music music, why do we care so much about it, was a big deal to me.

My Honors Thesis is a history of a Portuguese composer called Carlos Seixas (it’s a really uncommon name, it’s the same name of the Sephardic Jew who taught Hebrew to Joseph Smith, in the school of the prophets.) I was playing some of his music in my recital, and I was interested in Portuguese music--it’s an untapped field. I could do the Portuguese research because I had the background in Portuguese from my mission. Through some of my professors at BYU I found out that in Oxford there was a musicologist who specialized in Portuguese music. They suggested I apply and start working with him. This is funny because when I was about twenty I had got it into my head that I was going to go to Oxford. The thought just popped into my head, “I’m going to go to Oxford.” And I had forgotten about it! I remembered telling my friends about it, that I was going to apply for a Rhoades Scholarship, and then I just forgot! Until it came up when my professors suggested it, at least 3 years later, and I remembered, “Oh, I wanted to do that!” I put in my application to Oxford in May, then went on a study abroad to Oxford and Cambridge in July, then got my acceptance letter to Oxford while I was at Cambridge. So I came home for three weeks, got a visa, and found temporary jobs so I could pay for a plane ticket to get back to Oxford… I worked on an assembly line, I drove a delivery truck… Just to I pay for a flight back to start my degree at Oxford.

MHR: How do you feel that your time at Oxford changed you?

That’s a big question. It changed my blood. Oxford resonated very strongly with me. I felt there were a lot of factors. That was the first place where I felt like I could focus on my studies and I didn’t have to worry about how I was going to pay for it. I felt financially taken care of and I had what I needed. And that was a new feeling for me.

I’m more confident, and more self-aware. It’s not like I couldn’t get these things in other places, maybe it was partly the timing of being in my mid-twenties, and I just happened to be there… Being on my own… Being able to talk to people from all over theworld, and feeling like I fit in, in this world where everybody was from a different country. I never had an American roommate.

I felt like I was responsible for everything I knew, everything I’d learned in the past, and for everything else people expected me to know. I felt very responsible for that. I think this is the important part: We have a responsibility for the opportunities we have, for the education we receive, for the wisdom bestowed on us through our life experiences. It would be like learning to drive, and then refusing to drive well. In that way, the whole experience of living abroad and forming an opinion about the world, learning things that I find important, I feel like I have a responsibility to reflect those things in my character and personality, and to contribute those things to my society.

What I realized is I have this image of what a BYU grad is like; I have an image of what an Oxford grad is like, I have an image of what a Mormon woman is like, and if I wanted that image to be maintained, to be true, then I had to be that. If I wanted that image to be something else, then I had to change it, but now that I have those labels on me, BYU, Oxford, they’re going to be on my resume for the rest of my life and people will think certain things about it. It’s kind of like taking on another name—people identify me with those names. There’s not going back to the way you used to be, once you’ve had an educational experience. You’re responsible for using the tools that you have.

If anything, having had the educational advancement that I’ve had has made me more committed to a domestic life. [Ha ! I love Ruth. This totally caught me off guard, totally out of the blue, but I love where she goes with it..]I love to cook and clean more now than I ever did before I went to graduate school. They are creative processes that are important to human life. Julie Beck says you never get away from mundanity no matter what your job is.

More than choosing what we’re going to do, is choosing how we’re going to do what we need to do. And one thing feeds on another. If we do one thing well, we’ll do another thing well. The only thing that’s going to hold you back and really disqualify you is stopping doing things, not thinking or creating. But doing one thing, being creative in one way, facilitates our ability to create in other ways.

If you’re a good student, you’ll be a good mother. You engage the same faculties. And it works in the opposite direction. That’s why there are so many curve-breaking mothers on campus! Have you ever had a class with a 40-year-old mother who’s raised five kids? You’re never going to top her! She’s going to get better grades than you, every time! If you can learn to engage your mind in something, you’ll pick up the skills you need to get a good job, start your business, run a household, anything.

MHR: If you were to give advice to little freshman Ruth, what would you say?

I would say, do not be afraid of anything. It just slows you down. Don’t be afraid that one choice will exclude other choices. Rarely is that the case. That kind of black-and-white, either-or thinking is kind of like a disease. Fear takes away the opportunities you’re afraid you won’t get. The only thing that’s going to hold you back and really disqualify you is stopping doing things, not thinking or creating.