Bear with me while I jump around, here:
It was a turn-off in the sense that 90% of what I heard there barely classified as music. I know you can pretty much apply the label "music" to any combination of sounds these days, but there will always be that distinction between music that the average person could enjoy and music that the average person would dismiss as garbage. Watching a guy play random multiphonics on an E-flat clarinet for nine minutes while a graphic on a screen distorts will never cut it, and that's what most of the compositions were. I talked to the department head afterwards, and while he never explicitly stated it, it seems like they're pretty encouraging of extreme experimentalism. Maybe I have misconceptions of what the focus in a computer music program is?
Correct. But don't take that to mean that I think I have nothing to learn about composing, or that I'm a master of music theory. Writing for large ensembles and orchestral arrangement, in particular, are things on which I need to work.
That's terrifying, if true. Right now, I work as a social game programmer, and the hours often border on ridiculous. Money's fantastic, but I don't really care about money. Call it a motivation problem if you want, but after spending so many hours focused on work, it's difficult to get some serious composing done. Maybe other people don't agree, but I find composing to be pretty mentally taxing.
1. Yes: in addition to what I said above, I need to work on pretty much every aspect on the computer side of things.
2. No.
3. Of course! The real world is pretty terrible when you spend every day doing something you hate.
I'm not afraid to admit that in addition to grad school being a good source of continued education that would let me really focus on some skills of mine that need major development, it's also a way of escaping my current situation, where I feel trapped and completely unable to put time into things that I really want to pursue. I was also hoping that maybe the years I'd spend in school would be good for networking, or getting my foot in the door of the music industry, so that after graduation I would be able to move pretty much immediately into a situation where I'd be able to at least support myself.
Thanks, by the way, for being up-front about the trials involved and the reality of the situation, and for not just saying "yeah, man, you should do it!"