A particular trial for many over-educated musicians is the ubiquity of background music. Studying music for ridiculous lengths of time during their formative years can make some musicians so focused on music that they are incapable of ignoring it; for us, there no longer is any such thing as background music. Any music we hear immediately become our primary focus. This can make conversations in restaurants difficult. . . and maybe I shouldn’t even talk about elevators.
Many over-educated musicians also have music playing in their heads, pretty much constantly. This can be useful; I recently went on a two-day backpacking trip during which I listened to several bands from a recent Celtic music festival, a selections of Lutheran hymns, and several of the works of Josquin de Prez, all without having to carry an mp3 player. It can also give one a vacant (or totally nuts) expression that causes social problems, and, as you might imagine, combining the involuntary focus on music with the mental mp3 player can cause even more social problems.
