Ian Copeland

Ian.Copeland@oberlin.edu

Majors: clarinet performance and Third World studies

Minors: ethnomusicology and religion

 

Greetings, terrified first-years! I’m Ian Copeland, a fourth-year double-degree student hailing from Tallahassee, Florida. On campus you can find me either at the bike co-op fixing a flat tire, in the Conservatory library shelving books, or at Mudd library, procrastinating—or even snoozing—until the 2am closing time. I perform with Collegium Musicum and the Contemporary Music Ensemble—a combination that satisfies my vim for both old and new music. I’ve spent my Oberlin summers working in a North Carolina pottery studio, eating pizza (and playing some clarinet) at the Aspen Music Festival, and designing and teaching a course in World Music for a charter school in Hong Kong.

 

One tremendous boon I’ve taken advantage of at Oberlin is the opportunity to travel beyond Northeast Ohio’s corn-blazoned confines. For my first winter term, I secured funding from the Winter Term Committee to travel to Malawi with an NGO focused on HIV-AIDS classroom education. For my second winter term, I journeyed to Panama with a group of Conservatory students to work closely with high-schoolers in a summer (theirs, not ours) music enrichment program. Last fall, I helped establish an exchange program with a music conservatory in Copenhagen, Denmark, and spent a semester of study there.

 

Upon my arrival for first-year orientation, I knew—given Oberlin’s unique location—that I’d be hunkering down for five years of relative isolation compared with some of my metropolitan-bound high-school classmates. What I couldn’t have then known but have since learned to cherish is the creative space—be it musical or intellectual—that both Oberlin’s distinctive location and stellar faculty allow. From charting interdisciplinary fields of study to premiering musical compositions that could just as well be photocopied from The Joy of Cooking, Oberlin is truly a place where you can be (and discover) yourself.

 

Short List of Favorites

 

Local Cuisine: The recent arrival of Agave’s quesadilla machine answered 2.5 years of thoughtful, meticulous prayer.

 

Author: Paul Auster. His stories always begin just the way you’d expect only to af bm'a te .14 as.

 

Under-advertised Resource at Oberlin: The Pottery Co-op. At a measly $30 a semester, you’ll never go shopping for a Mother’s Day present again.

 

Favorite First-year Courses

 

First Year Seminar 134: Crossing Borders. Above all else, working with Professor Walker honed my ability to write cogently and contribute to group discussion in deliberate and meaningful ways.

 

CAST 211: LGBTQ Identities. Truly an Oberlin course to the core: challenging reading, the expectation of high quality outside research, and invaluable exposure to an emerging field of study from an interdisciplinary perspective.