In music school, collaborating with other musicians went something like this. Whether accompanying a singer, a clarinetist, a violinist, or playing in a chamber group.
We would meet once, twice, or even three times per week to rehearse. Depending on the other musicians, just staying together from start to finish would be considered a win. Other times, there might be in-depth discussions of phrasing and musicality.
By performance day, dozens of hours of rehearsal time would have been logged.
Then I entered the real world.
And discovered it doesn't work this way at all.
In most situations, it's one rehearsal, then the performance. For better or worse. Many times, the rehearsal being on the same day as the performance.
And once in a while, the first run-through and the performance are one and the same.
It's occurred to me over the years, why weren't we trained to do that in school? After all, rehearsing over several weeks for a performance versus rehearsing one hour before a performance are totally different levels of skill.
And if you're good at the former, but suck at the latter, you'll struggle as a working musician outside of music school.
It's the same with any kind of education.
School versus experience. Theory versus practice.
Education is great, but doing the thing in the real world is another game altogether.