14 MONTANALAWYER WWW.MONTANABAR.ORG
PRACTICING WELL
MERI ALTHAUSER
Meri Althauser is an
attorney of over 10
years practicing family
law and mediation in
Missoula. Her practice
focuses on collaboration
and solution-nding for
her clients and their
families. She also oers
consulting services in
workplace wellness,
with a certication as
a Workplace Wellness
Specialist through
the National Wellness
Institute and as a
Resilience and Thriving
Facilitator through
Organizational Wellness
and Learning Systems.
Many of you probably don’t know
this tidbit about my backstory but I
was previously destined to be a concert
violinist from the age of 4 years old
through post-college.
I took lessons at the university
starting at 9, played in the University
Orchestra and Missoula Symphony
starting in late middle school, and at-
tended Lawrence University, a music
conservatory in Wisconsin, for college.
Surprisingly, I dropped to a music
minor aer feeling like the music com-
munity was just too adversarial and
competitive for me. at ironic choice
will have to be saved for another article,
but I digress.
In college, we were required to
practice for 40 hours per week in ad-
dition to all of our regular classes and
homework. We were given challenging
pieces of music to learn for playing
tests and recitals, and we played in the
Lawrence Symphony. e endeavor
was for technical perfection, musical-
ity, and moving emotional expression.
A lot of time and energy was poured
into perfecting each piece of music.
Tears were shed. Frustrations regularly
mounted at 2 a.m. in the basement of
that music conservatory.
Part of music education included
what’s called “masterclass” where each
of the students in the studio played
the pieces we were working on for the
group in a classroom setting. While
the student performed, the instruc-
tor oen sat in the front row or stood
over the student to yell corrections
during the performance and the other
students in the class were also free to
holler their input in real time: “Faster!”
“With more emotion!” “F-sharp!!”
“Sadder!” “Shhhhh” “We can’t heeaarrr
youuuuu!” “Wilder!” “More Cat-like!”
and so on.
We were expected to hear, process,
and incorporate these friendly sugges-
tions in the millisecond between hear-
ing the cue and playing the next note
without getting frustrated, stopping,
or disagreeing. When done, then the
full class repeats their feedback round-
robin style for next time. Fun, right?
Masterclass!
But this torturous-sounding method
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