It’s rare for a high school dropout to achieve two college degrees. Oakland University alumni Ari Hajek is an exception to that rule.

“Things went so well, that I never went back to high school,” Hajek said. “I finished my degree in 3.5 years at age 19. To this day, I still like to say that I’m a high school dropout — with a Bachelor’s, and a Master’s.”

Hajek graduated from OU in December of 2009 with a Bachelor of Music in Instrumental Performance. He then went on to get his Master’s at Rutgers University in New Jersey. There he was able to study with members of the Philadelphia Orchestra, New York City Ballet and New York Philharmonic.

Now, you can find him as a post-graduate student at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh. He is working on an advanced music studies certificate, which is a degree geared for those taking orchestral auditions.

Hajek lived in Rochester Hills for 22 years. His father is an attorney and his mother is a freelance musician. Although music has always played a huge part in his life, it wasn’t until the age of 13 that he started considering music as a career.

“I was talked out of it for a long time. My mother was able to tell me how tough the music business could be. Lots of rehearsals, late nights, gigs that don’t pay much — plenty of reasons for me to know early on that I wanted a career with better pay and more stability,” Hajek said.

At the age of 14, Hajek played in several youth orchestras in the area. He started to enjoy playing, but still wasn’t convinced there was a future in it.

He said that all changed when he met the principal timpanist of the Detroit Symphony Orchestra, Brian Jones.

“Brian is now timpanist with the Dallas Symphony, but while he was in Michigan throughout my teens, he inspired me to become a timpanist. He sounded great and had plenty of swagger when he played,” Hajek said.

It was after he took lessons with Jones that Hajek realized he didn’t want to be a doctor and, in fact, wanted to be a musician.

Over the course of the next year, he dedicated his time to acquiring portable timpani to take to gigs and gradually began to get hired for more jobs. It eventually reached the point where he was sick of his academic classes in high school and would occasionally joke about dropping out and going to college.

Prior to these ponderings, Hajek had been studying with Dan Maslanka, OU lecturer of music, theatre and dance, for several years and his mom had connections within the music department.

At the end of his sophomore year in high school, Hajek was able to become a dual-enrolled student, starting his first year at Oakland’s music department in the fall of 2006.

“Ari’s time at Oakland was a great launching point for his rare combination of talent, intelligence and hard work,” Maslanka said. “Put those together with a genuinely caring, respectful young man and there is a wonderful future in store for him.  I have no doubt that Ari will have a job with a major orchestra someday, since that is his aspiration.”

Hajek hopes to win a job with an orchestra, but it is a lot of work.

The musical journey for this “high school dropout” is far from over, and it is hard to tell what rules will be broken — successfully — along the way.