Meaningful music careers are created and sustained not simply by maintaining high levels of technical and music skill, but by remaining curious, adapting to change, working well with others, and finding the work personally satisfying. In addition to honing career skills, there are corresponding life skills that emerging adults need to develop in order to lead healthy and meaningful lives (Savickas & Porfeli, 2012; Sherman, 2020). Recently, arts graduates reported problem-solving and communication abilities among the many requisite skills they did not develop sufficiently during their degree programs for their current work. To discover if a purposeful sample of music students at a comprehensive American university shared similar “skills gaps” (SNAAP, 2025) and to learn more about their anticipated early career needs, a case study was conducted. The case study explored graduate students’ perceptions of skills they thought would be important in their future careers and ways in which these were and were not developed within coursework. A discussion includes the types of projects that develop requisite situational skills can be folded into existing curricula. The constant-comparison method was employed to identify the following common themes amongst the participants: career agency, adaptability, problem-solving skills, wellness, and communication. Although not generalizable from a case study, transformational learning though project-based activities, group work, and deep self-reflection hold promise for music students to develop agency, adaptability, problem-solving, and communication skills, while valuing and forming wellness habits that could lead to successful emerging careers and sustainability throughout a lifetime.