My name is Ben Leibovitz and I'm a
candidate for the master of Arts and
Music Theory. I came to Western for my
graduate degree because I finished my
undergrad here at Western, just last year,
and I really felt that, I started to sort
of coming to my stride right in the final
a couple of years of my degree, and I
kind of, didn't want to leave it just yet,
so I feel like I wanted to resume
studies, at already faculty music.
Well currently I don't have a fixed
research program on, what's a course base
masters program is what it's called, and
that allows me to take variety of
different courses without having to
specify in one specific field and write
a thesis, I thought that that would be a
better solution for me just because then
I could get a better grounding now, and
then potentially pick something later
for a doctorate level. What allows me to
be successful in the Don Wright Faculty of
Music is the music library, it's
second-largest in Canada, and one of the
largest in North America, and having
access to that many research materials
for my degree, is a huge asset. Best thing
about being a Western graduate student
is, the fantastic faculty that we have
available here, they're super
knowledgeable, they cover a wide variety
of topics all across the board, and
they're known nationally and
internationally, and having that core
faculty base, that really has a
phenomenal understanding of the material
that they're teaching, is a fantastic way for
us students to learn. The best advice I
can give to someone applying for my
program is, to obviously be prepared for
the amount of work that your about to
undertake, it is a lot of work, and I
guess this goes for any program in
general, but also to be aware of your
leisure time and to make time for
yourself, and to enjoy the experiences we
have here, I guess a specific example for
us and music faculties, we have I think,
it's around 300 or 400 concerts that run
every year, and a lot of those can go
easily missed if you're not careful, and
there's some really fantastic
is happening down there, so make sure you
get some time to check it out.
