The rest of the building is a little less magnificent.

Almost all classrooms have a piano, and whiteboards with staves on them for music theory, something the average student will probably come to dread. It’s an all Steinway school. Even private lesson rooms have pianos just in case, and obviously the vocal rooms need accompanists, so their pianos are a little better. And then there’s the floor of practice rooms. Come up at any time of day (they’re open until 2 am) and you will hear any mixture of instruments leaking through the soundproof walls. Left and right, doors are closed with ID cards in the windows - first come first serve. But none of them get the piano rooms. These are locked by key code individual for each piano major, there’s only about 20. The five rooms have specific lighting that allows you to see what it might feel like to be on stage. And they are always warm enough that your fingers don’t get too cold to play. Each are equipped with a Steinway grand - the good kind. Pianists have to reserve times to use these rooms, but if you come first thing in the morning while everyone else sleeps, you can get a couple of extra hours in before you have to leave.

But all the golden windows and rolling staircases and effortlessly beautiful Steinway grands make it easy to overlook that this is not effortless. The soundproof rooms do not keep your screams of frustration silent; the way to do that is to keep them in your head until a single tear rolls down your cheek, which must be wiped before someone walks past the window. Trapped in a small hot room for the two hours you can concentrate the least because if you don’t do it now then when will you. And anyone frantically reading a music theory textbook at 9:45 in the morning can tell you the anger of doing more work in a two-credit class than an honors four-credit one. And knowing that now that you’re on break, you can spend all your free time catching up on the practice you missed because you had other homework. Because you were in school.

Lamont does not feel like college because it hardly is.