Name: Christine Gow
Year: 2nd
Major: Psych and Social Behavior
Most college students spend their summers taking a much-needed break from studying, hard work, and the stress that comes along with being a collegiettetm. Christine Gow, a nineteen year old sophomore, however, spends the majority of her time outside of school rehearsing and touring with The Blue Devils, a highly competitive and fourteen time world champion drum and bugle corp. The Blue Devils, according to Christine, is essentially a “glorified marching band.” However, The Blue Devils Drum corps is on a completely different level than the typical marching band, because the competition is more rigorous, the talent level is profoundly greater, and members and fan bases are international rather than belonging to a particular area or school.
Playing the Euphonium since fifth grade, Christine progressed out of high school marching band and into drum corps at age 15. At age 18, she got accepted into The Blue Devils. Once spring quarter starts, Christine will travel up north to rehearse with The Blue Devils every weekend. She will leave immediately after finals to start touring with the group, which performs across the country for crowds of about 15,000 people. During the last tour, The Blue Devils placed first the entire season, leaving them undefeated. But this only intensified the hostility that the group experiences while traveling, especially in the south, where many loyal drum corp fans believe that The Blue Devils shouldn’t win as much as they do. Just like with most sports teams, people form allegiances with particular drum corp groups—and sometimes it can be taken to the extreme.
Although participating in drum corps takes up a lot of her time, money, and energy, Christine says that wouldn’t have it any other way. To her, drum corps has “become a way of life.” She describes the people she marches with as a sort of “second family,” since everyone spends extended amounts of time together. Christine plans to tour with The Blue Devils each summer until she turns 22, in when she will have aged out of the program. Until that time comes, she is making the most of out her college experience by balancing her coursework with a unique and prestigious extracurricular activity, that not many other students can boast about.