Humans of Morristown: Ms. Scott

by Ryan Synder, Staff Writer

Dreams change all the time. Some, in days. Some take years. When Miss Scott was in middle school it was her dream to be the director of covert operations for the Central Intelligence Agency. She wrote a paper about it, and her teachers even asked her to read it aloud. When she told me this, I was thoroughly confused, as, well, she’s a choir teacher now. 

So, I asked, “What happened to that?” To which she responded “I realized I didn’t want to work for the government–I mean I do work for the government–but not in THAT capacity. I enjoyed music but I didn’t know I wanted to be a music teacher until I was in high school.”

Next, it was a news anchor. Miss Scott graduated Salutatorian or second of her class. She told me how hard she worked in high school. The next thing she wanted was to just, “lay under the sun–on a sunny rock like a lizard.” 

Looking back, Miss Scott regrets graduating second in her class. When I asked her what her greatest regret was, she said, “In high school, in college, I was very much oriented my life towards pleasing adults, and just like trying to be right, all the time. I excelled academically, I graduated second in my class, and spoke at graduation, and I, I regret that.”

I thought that was absurd, “You regret graduating second of your class?”

“I regret excelling the way that I did at academics because it set me up in this like situation where I was like ‘Okay I want everyone around me to look at what I’m doing and be like that’s perfect, that’s ideal, that’s excellence,’” continuing on to say, “Any time anyone looks at me I must be perfect, I must be doing things perfectly and um, it made it much harder later in life when I thought I was like, ‘Oh I’m engaged and I should get married, I’m saving for a house, I am working in a job teaching high school students, which is everyone’s ideal situation’ that I finally realized that this actually isn’t for me, and that’s why I regret it. I regret trying to be perfect, I regret worrying that hard, I wish that I had followed my heart instead of my brain.”

“Speaking of the heart, what would you say was your spark or your muse to music?”

“I was good at it, you see what I’m saying? Is like–why do I do music? Because I was good at it.”

Miss Scott told me how music didn’t move her emotionally–In high school, she said, “The one thing I happened to do VERY well was music. And I was like ‘Great! I’ll just do this for the rest of my life.’” 

So, Miss Scott went to college for music. Her degree gives her certification for band, strings, and choir education. But she went for the band–her instrument of choice is a clarinet. She taught in marching bands for seven years, and middle school band environments.

During that time, she worked in a school district that she described as oppressive to its students, worked eighteen-hour days, and was really at what she would describe as her all time low.  

I asked her, towards the start of the interview, “What would you say is your greatest accomplishment?” And, what she said stuck with me.

She told me, “My biggest accomplishment is that when I–I got so sick that I had to leave school for a bit and also ended my engagement and had like a very hard emotional period and my biggest accomplishment in my life is getting through that to where I am now. I was a perfectionist, I was obsessed with um like having like a picture perfect instagram life, I was like really worried about my students being oppressed by the administration at the previous school, and then on the other side of it, you know me now, right, where I’m like ‘everybody do whatever you want, live your best life, ask for forgiveness not permission,’ I live a life that I’m very proud of and happy with, and it’s way different than the life I lived before. And I feel like most people would be like, ‘Oh I got a degree, or oh I..’ Y’know what is something tangible, ‘Oh I bought a house’ or ‘I had a child’ but for me like, changing my

personality completely was my biggest accomplishment.”

Maybe in another universe there’s a Miss Scott that ended up as the director of covert operations for the central intelligence agency, or stayed a band teacher, or stayed at her old school. And, though Miss Scott never would’ve dreamed herself where she is today back in high school, you’ll never find a happier choir teacher than her.