Small Kid, Big Dreams: Tom Biglin

What do you want to do when you get older?—a question that is perhaps more terrifying than any you would find on your AP Chemistry exam, or as your AP U.S. History DBQ prompt. Nowadays, Stuyvesant students are often pressured into planning out their entire lives from the first day of high school. However, in reality, many of us harbor uncertainty toward our futures and feel a sense of despair when a classmate lays out each of their vocational plans leading up to the date of their retirement. Stuyvesant alumnus Tom Biglin (‘85) was one of those classmates, confident in his eventual pursuit of a pre-med degree, yet he wound up at the University of Pennsylvania studying English and theater. 

Following his introduction to the field of music therapy, a profession whose existence he was unaware of until after he left undergraduate school, Biglin returned and received his master’s degree in music therapy at New York University, which he has utilized in his contributions to various medical and mental health facilities throughout New York. At the age of 56, he is currently teaching at and attending Temple University to receive his Ph.D. in music therapy. Despite the endless twists and turns in his education and career path, Biglin has settled down into a line of work that has brought success and meaning into his life. Rest assured: it is never too late to come up with an answer to that harrowing question.

Biglin took the SHSAT on a whim, hoping to secure himself a spot in the reputedly rigorous academic environment that exists within the hallways of Stuyvesant High School. “I was going to public school in Queens and didn’t take any practice exams,” he said. “But I heard about the school and I thought it’d be great because [...] instead of being the standout smart kid or [one of a] few smart kids, you have a whole school of that.”

Following his acceptance to Stuyvesant, Biglin began to adjust to the bustle of Lower Manhattan, whose bold trends and spirited atmosphere bore no resemblance to his hometown experiences. “The first day I got there, I got off the L train, walked up 14th Street, turned left at 15th, and I saw this guy with a mohawk, and I thought, ‘Wow, I’m not in Queens anymore,’” he said. “It was gritty; punk rock, New Wave was around, and here I am wearing my glasses and my backpack.”

Coming from Queens, Biglin spent a considerable amount of his day commuting to school via public transportation. “[I took] the J train and the L [...], and this was in the early ‘80s, when the city was coming out of bankruptcy. So the trains were worse than they are now,” he said. “I didn’t have much time outside once I got home, because you spend your time commuting, doing your homework, and you come back to class.”

Nonetheless, Biglin was able to make the most out of the unreliable public transit system, utilizing his commute as an opportunity to complete homework assignments. “In the old days, these trains were broken down. So you’d hope to get a train where one of the doors wouldn’t open, and you’d stand against that. Or you’d get a seat and try to do your work,” he said.

While attending Stuyvesant, Biglin was particularly struck by Frank McCourt, an English teacher who went on to win a Pulitzer Prize for his acclaimed memoir, Angela’s Ashes, in 1997. “He was great because he talked to us like adults,” he said. “He had a creative writing class where he’d have us write a children’s book. So it wasn’t just like he would read it, he’d bring it to the school kids and they were harsh [in their critiques of the books]. And so it was a real education in what the process of writing is like.”

Despite his initial plan to pursue medicine, Biglin became heavily immersed in music during his time at Stuyvesant, devoting the entirety of his four years to the Renaissance Choir. “We used to have what we called zero period, so before classes started, we’d meet up at eight in the morning in the building and rehearse Renaissance music, five days a week,” he said. “I wound up directing it my senior year, [and I] took it as a freshman all the way through.”

As high school progressed, he further dedicated himself to the arts, ultimately finding his niche in theater production. “I got cast in a musical, my senior year, Oklahoma. It was just one of those things [that] opened me up to a whole different kind of socialization and expression of myself,” he said. Biglin found SING! another outlet for creative expression, which he did not fully commit to until his senior year. “I didn’t do much freshman year. I think sophomore year, I got involved a little bit, but I didn’t really perform much. In senior year [...], I got cast as a few lead roles in SING! and it was fun. It was a great way to meet up with people. You learn a lot about things outside of the classroom,” he added.

Biglin fondly recalls Vincent Grasso, the faculty advisor of SING! and director of other theater productions that he participated in. “He was another person who helped us transition into adulthood,” Biglin said. “He was someone that was larger than life, but also was a kind of counselor for us. He was a teacher, but he was the one that students would go to.”

While applying to colleges, Biglin relied on a mixture of grades as well as his involvement in a diverse range of classes in order to present himself as a strong student. Though he was waitlisted by Yale University, his “dream school,” Biglin enrolled at UPenn following his acceptance. “I think [my GPA] was somewhere between 93 and 95. I know I wrote an essay that probably helped. I had a mixture of the arts and sciences, and Penn took me,” he said.

Interestingly enough, his SAT score did not have much of an influence on his college admission decision. “I still know my SAT [scores] to this day. It wasn’t as stellar as other friends,” he said. “I took it twice, and my math never changed: 590. My verbal was 700. So I didn’t even break 1300, and I got into an Ivy League school.”

While transitioning to college life, Biglin felt that Stuyvesant had prepared him well for certain facets of adulthood that other college students were not as accustomed to. “[In] college, mom and dad aren’t around if you go out of town, and your friends and your professors don’t care if you come to class or not,” he said. “[During high school], my folks were there and they’d check and see if I was doing homework, but [during college] it [was no longer like] that. Most of us at Stuy are pretty self-motivated, right? We do homework without having to be told.”

Following his studies at UPenn, Biglin stumbled upon music therapy by chance while attempting to secure an acting gig. He was completely unaware of the profession, which was relatively new at the time but decided to delve into the field as it offered him the opportunity to combine his scholarly interests. “[Music therapy] slowly built up and around 1950, I think, they [established] the first program out in the Midwest,” he said. “I was able to do the things I wanted to do at Stuy and it took a long time but they [became connected]. The arts and the sciences met up.”

He then worked as a music therapist in a multitude of hospitals and healthcare facilities throughout the city and has found great meaning in being able to help others throughout his career. “I’ve worked with a lot of older people privately and I had been working at Lenox Hill Hospital for about seven years [...] I was there during COVID working with the palliative medicine team. I was part of palliative medicine [medical care focused on pain relief for those with severe illnesses], so it was me, a couple of physicians, nurse practitioners, nurses, chaplaincy, social workers, and I had music,” he said. “I’ll sing something, and all of a sudden, people who are having memory issues can remember the songs from when they were younger. Having a chance to use creative arts modality in a therapeutic way has a lot of research benefits.” Biglin is currently working as an assistant professor and studying at Temple University to receive his Ph.D. in music therapy.

Though his English degree is not entirely applicable to his career as a music therapist, Biglin continues to find value in his former education. “People can change a lot. I learned a lot about the arts and about being an actor, [which helped] me become a good therapist, learning how to listen,” he said. “There’s a whole world of culture and the sciences and all these different things. So, you know, we have so much time on this planet and there’s so much you can absorb.”

Biglin urges current Stuyvesant students to remain open-minded toward education and to recognize that there is a vast world of creativity beyond the restraints of what one may define as their personal interests. “If you’re going to be in pre-med, great, but also take an art class. You have your groups now, and you’ll maybe stay friends with some of those people, but you’re going to open up a whole new world of things,” Biglin explained. “It’s a lifelong process. As I said, I’m teaching now. I learn from my students. I learn that there’s so much more to learn. And we’re all students, no matter how old you get.” His unforeseen path to success reminds students that there is no need to commit ourselves to futures that we have planned out from day one; after all, we have our entire lives ahead of us to discover how we want to spend them.