Monday, March 29, 2010

our light is broken

another week has come and gone...
unfortunately the nice spring weather didn't last long. we had cold days and on friday, it snowed. wtf? it literally snowed for 8 hours and then melted. that's sweet, right? bhlarrrgh.

so yeah, i'm chilling in the library right now. the lights at our table don't work so i'm sitting basically in the corner, shrouded in darkness. i feel like a ninja. lauren is trying to find books for our project on celtic music, and i am sitting here watching her purse.

this past week was really eventful in many ways. it was advising week, so i met up with dr. w a few times to get my schedule in order and plan out the next two years. basically, i have three semesters left to squeeze everything in. i will have to stay next summer, especially if i am going to do an honor's thesis in order to get an honor's diploma. w thinks it's a good idea because he says that i am going to be a professor of teacher education one day, and that always looks good on resumes. i really don't know if i can do it though, because i still have to take two honors courses plus write an honors thesis, and this all has to be done before the spring of my senior year. i can't take any other classes that semester because i will be student teaching full time. so three semesters it is. god i'm scared. i really have no clue if this is going to happen... but i REALLY do not want to stay an extra year, and i really can't. my scholarships are only for four years, and i will not have the funds to cover the rest of it unless i declare independency from my parents and take out loans. i don't want to be in debt the rest of my life. ugggh things are so complicated. i've met with w twice so far, and i'll probably have to meet with him again.

thursday i got to have a semi-private lesson with a really great trumpet player... he hosted a masterclass and i was literally the only student. it was really helpful, actually. i learned that i work too hard when playing, and i need to improve my breathing. then this guy gave a recital on friday night. damn i wish i could play like that. he played a really well known trumpet piece, and it was really cool to hear the inner movements because i am not as familiar with them.

friday... friday was really nice, minus the snow! we were supposed to go observe some high school bands in the area, but they all had a snow day. soooo because i had already been excused from classes... i didn't go lol. i only really missed info in my stats class, but i can catch that up.

saturday, jarred gave his junior recital. i thought he did really well. he's such a great pianst, even though he doesn't think so. after that, we hung out at his house for most of the night.

yesterday professor fab gave her last official recital before retirement. i can't even begin to tell you how amazing she is. i love that woman to death - she's so talented and such a wonderful person.

OHHH!! i almost forgot! last wednesday was housing lottery. savannah and i got a two person house on fountain ave. for next year. i am soooo excited. it is a giant house that has been split into different little apartments, and we are the only two person one. all the others are one person. i feel like we are going to be the loud obnoxious neighbors lol.

well, we will see how life goes. things are busy. life is good. it's going to be near 70 degrees on wednesday. i'm going home for easter on friday morning!

Sunday, March 21, 2010

In springtime, the only pretty ringtime

HOORAY!!! SPRING!!!



the vernal equinox has come and gone, and what is left is longer days, warmer weather, and general better moods. i noticed a change on campus as soon as we got back from break... everyone was nicer to each other, people were out jogging, relaxing, playing, frolicking... :D

the past week has been kind of stressful getting back into the swing of things. my sleep schedule has taken some time to readjust. have had to do some work just to generally catch up, but that's okay.

we had two concerts this past week, and i got to be at both of them. the first was a performance by one of the voice teachers, and i flipped pages for the amazing organist extraordinare, trudy faber, esq. it was quite a different experience being up there rather than in the audience. it felt like the organ was coming from all around me, not at me. wild.
the second concert was quite an emotional one - it was dr. busarow's last home concert of a 28 year reign. they had almost two hundred alumni return to campus for this. i think the choir put on the best concert of their lives. there are two songs that are sung at the end of every concert - when i surveyed the wondrous cross and the benediction. and to see all the alumni join the choir at the front of the church, and then surround the entire audience for the benediction... so powerful. we gave them a silent ovation; after the benediction, no one clapped, no one cheered, no one moved. dr. busarow left his podium and walked down the center aisle of the chapel in complete silence. i wasn't even in choir and i was crying. afterwards, there was a reception in the cdr which was pretty fun. alumni told a bunch of stories from their experiences and from choir tour (the choir takes a trip every spring break and sings at churches - this year they went to the east coast). it was a great time, and i could tell that even though dr. b was pretty emotional (who wouldn't be, after 28 years and interacting with almost 500 choir members?) he held things together quite gracefully. i know it will be hard for him to leave the choir and have someone else directing, because that choir is very much his identity. but - with time, things will be well.

that was friday night. friday morning i had to wake up ungodly early to go to a local middle school to observe some bands. i got to see fifth grade and up. i was impressed at the sheer number of kids involved in music at that school! it gives me hope.

yesterday sav and i took a trip out to dr. w's place. he has a pond, so we went fishing. didn't catch anything, unfortunately. the wind kept blowing our boat to the far shore. but it was really nice to relax and soak in some sun and spend time with w and sav outside the college world. i feel so refreshed after communing with nature.

today has been busy; we had housing tours for a place to live next year. sav and i found two houses and faculty court apartments. i would be happy living in any of those, honestly. i just really hope things are worked out... our lottery number isn't the greatest, but maybe there'll be a miracle and we'll be able to live somewhere NOT in the dorms...
we also had our budget hearing today for fishing club. basically, we have to go in front of student senate and had to justify them giving us almost a thousand dollars over the course of next year for the club. i thought it went really well, our budget was consise and laid out well. hopefully we'll get most of the money we asked for.

so now i am going to spend the rest of the day doing homework. yayyy. i have some projects coming up, so my time is going to be cut even shorter. oh well.

adios muchachos!

Tuesday, March 09, 2010

it's like gravity

why is it that the people i cherish the most are the ones i never get to spend enough time with?

i went to see benford today at prospect. first time in two months. he split up the group into woodwinds and brass, and i was in charge of the brass... god it was awful. we were in the gym which is naturally loud, and when you've got about 15 flutes/clarinets competing with 10 trombones/trumpets - it really never ends up well. i could tell they really wanted to learn and play, but it was just hard with the other group trying to do their own thing too. after prospect we went to hazel's for lunch. we talked about how elyria is changing, and some about the budget cuts at the schools. what i like most about talking to benford is that even though things are sometimes really rough and kind of shitty, he can always find something positive. so after lunch, we went over to oakwood. i was really impressed. those kids are actually really great players. first we saw these two flute players who wanted to just play play play the whole time - they kept asking if they could do another song. then we met with a kid who just started playing trumpet about a month ago. when he hit a note successfully, it was some really great tone. he actually had trouble hitting lower notes, which in my opinion is better than struggling to hit high notes. he had no trouble playing higher. then two boys who played trombone; this one kid was totally rockin' it and he actually grasped the concept of a decsending scale. then were two drummers who were totally hyper but they read along with the entire page of music for a piece they'll be playing in their may concert. and then there was one lone clarinet player who actually was really good, though quiet. he could read the song and play it without much difficulty or having to start over. i was honestly amazed at how good some of them were, for being fifth graders. after we were done teaching, benford and i hung out outside waiting for jessica at oakwood. we just had a really random talk as is usual with him. then jess showed up and we all chatted for a while. after that, i helped take jessica's cat to the vet to get his stitches out of a big gash on his side. the poor kitty was crying in the car the whole time, darn near broke my heart. wendy's for dinner and then to plato's closet where none of us really found any clothes.

i just wanted to update a little since i did something out in the world today. probably going to the high school tomorrow to see a few teachers, since i haven't seen them since december or before. ugh, that means i have to get up semi-early. what happened to catching up on sleep over break?!

Monday, March 08, 2010

the best time to wear a striped sweater

oooh! update, update! i AM a festival!

i am at home in wonderful ol' e-town. mom came down and got me saturday morning. jeez, witt clears out super fast for breaks, and i was pretty much alone on the floor friday night. this was okay with me, because i felt like shit friday. actually left work early and skipped my first class... and went back and slept for hours. my roommate left friday evening, so i had the rest of the night to myself. the ride home was uneventful. when we got back to e-town, mom and i visited my grandmother for a while. she's so adorable... lately she's been sending articles related to music and arts from the Plain Dealer. just something small to find in my mailbox, because i hardly get any other mail. it's something nice to brighten my day.

yesterday was hella busy. my mom was the liturgist for church, so we had to be there at the ungodly (haha) hour of 8:30. lately i've been singing in the church choir since they badly need singers and the director is one of my friends. so i spent time rehearsing with them and learning (aka sightreading) the piece they'd be singing in church. i kind of like singing in the choir, since mom is doing now and otherwise i'd be sitting by myself! after church, my mom had this meeting with two other church members. it's part of a new program of prayer and discipleship that our pastor has started. so i sat in on that... and i had a minor revelation. for those of you that know me (and some that might not), i'm not necessarily a "religious" person. i'm still struggling with what i believe and where i stand in terms of formal religion, though i do enjoy going to our church. i feel comfortable there,and i agree with the church/denomination's wider philosophy. http://ucc.org/
i guess i just am still trying to figure out the whole god/jesus idea. i think church for me is more about the community we build. i always find something inspiring within the people or what they're doing as far as outreach and community service. yesterday morning, it was one of the kids that surprised me. every week, the children of the church have a small "children's message" before they go off to church school. it's just a small informal thing where they talk about the bible story of the day and then go downstairs. they always do a prayer, and the children's pastor asked if anyone would like to say a prayer. one boy, his name is matt, ended up doing it, and it was so graceful and simple and eloquent i literally had tears in my eyes. he said somethng along the line of "dear god, thank you for your grace, love and joy. amen". i thought it was so powerful that you don't need fancy words to pray or be a special person to worhip. and that's what leads me to my next point. do forgive me because this might be REALLY nerdy... but - i found that the feeling i get when i leave church is the same feeling i get when i play music or leave a rehearsal. so does that then mean that making music is my act of worship? i'm often happy, optimistic, and uplifted. and hey, in my humble opinion, isn't that what worship (of any kind) is all about? i really dislike those beliefs that say that god does bad things because people deserve it, or it's some kind of punishment. isn't god supposed to love everyone? aren't the teachings of jesus to love one another and to be kind and forgiving and full of grace? i know i'm not perfect, but i'd rather be judged by myself to my own standards than by someone else to standards that don't make sense to me. i've worn a ring on my middle finger of my left hand for at least two years - just a simple thing, silver, and inscribed on it is "God is Love." and i think that's really the only thing i stand by. god is love.

okay. religion rant is over. promise.

after church/meeting/lunch, my mom took me over to a friend's house so we could go to a meeting. this was a meeting for FOWL, or friends of wetlands. http://fowl.org/ it's a group my dad has been a part of since before i was born. it's basically a bunch of people who think the environment is important to protect and take care of... and yeah, there might be a few hippies. but since my dad has been involved with fowl, he brought me along to meetings and such since i was a little wee one. the group sent out a mailing four times a year of a newsletter with updates for members. i have memories of being in john katko's (the president of the group) basement late at night, collating and stapling and sticking and sealing those newsletters... and john katko swearing at the copy machine when it broke... and holding a salamander... and eating fresh string beans from his garden... and the music people made around fires...
i realized at this meeting yesterday that the members of fowl are like an extended part of my family. i've got my blood relatives that have seen me grow up, and i've also got the fowl family who have been around my entire life. they're really an eclectic group of people. a few are teachers; grandparents; musicians; librarians; writers; computer geeks... all of them were my parents' friends from way back. i cherish each of them in a unique way. i kind of lost touch with them because dad hasn't been as involved with fowl in recent years, and then of course i went off to school. i guess this meeting yesterday made me realize how lucky i am, because i feel like any of them would help me out if i called them up with a problem. anyway, what i guess i'm saying is that i feel very blessed to have a group of people who have been influential on my growing-up in a different way than family...i don't get to see any of them nearly enough.

wow. okay, this is a really long post. promise i'm almost done!!

today i went to great northern with stephanie and kelly. we got some food, went to platos closet and half priced books. i got two shirts (one of which is a REALLY cute button down shirt that actually doesn't cut off the circulation to my biceps) and a nice pair of khaki's. and then at half priced books i got a book of poetry by robert penn warren. -dies- he's my favorite poet... and here's my favorite poem: http://tinyurl.com/yborsnh

anyhoo... i'm going to see benford tomorrow!! yayyyyyy!!
other than that, i don't know what the rest of my week will consist of.

more to come, i'm sure!

Wednesday, March 03, 2010

all the colors mix together.

ooookay. so i don't know why i always forget about this damn blog!! i always want to write but for some reason it doesn't occur to me to sign on to blogger.
anyway... it's been 18 days since i last wrote and jeezum crow a lot of stuff has happened. let me see if i can remember...

well the weekend of the symphony (my last post), S. decided to move out of her room in Tower and move into my dorm. hooray! i could tell that the whole situation was causing her tons of stress, and so she finally decided to move. she's now living on the 5th floor of the same building as me! it's so awesome. though we had to carry all her crap up five floors with no elevator. ironically enough, unfortunately we haven't gotten to see each other a lot because we're both so busy. mehhh. also that week we had a housing meeting for next year. i'm going to try really hard to get an apartment/house off campus. if i get the few scholarships i have lined up, things will be sooo much easier. i also helped with this thing called the academic showcase, where basically seniors in high school come visit campus and if they're interested in a particular department, they can come to the building and talk to a prof and some majors. so i was there being a big bad sophomore in college, haha. we talked to 5 people i think, which was more than dr. k was expecting, so that's cool.

so last week was crazy. we got new music in band, so we were doing a lot of sightreading. i'm really excited for this concert; it's in bell fontaine and it's a ticketed event to raise money for the restoration of this theater. good way to get some publicity and a place to play! last wednesday i watched my first Indian film - Raja Hindustani. it was ridiculous. Indian films are like, a really big deal. this one tried to cram in every movie plot line imaginable - inlaws, forbidden love, fight scenes, stealing babies, machetes, singing and dancing... yeah it's really hard to explain. i sat there for three and a half hours going WTF? periodically. but we got a great meal out of it - hadn't had Indian food in a long time (actually since i went to washington d.c. in 2007).

another thing that happened over that week was the whole ordeal with Dr. W. he's working on some projects related to poverty and how that affects academic achievement in schools. he had asked me about facebook (because obviously i am a pro) and i said i'd help him if he wanted to get into that whole world. so one night he signed into facebook, and i tagged him in some pictures of fishing club (he's the advisor for fishing club, i'm the vice president, i know it's really random, don't ask). and i sent him an e-mail just joking that he actually signed into facebook, cause the last time was like in september. and he sent me back this really long e-mail about how he was a private person and didn't know what to do when things popped up on his page. and then i felt awful. i read that e-mail and i almost freaking cried. so naturally i apologized, cause i do stupid things and don't think. and i didn't get a response. like, NOTHING for a week. and every day i would check my mail and just feel shittier and shittier. so finally i got the guts to e-mail him again and apologize again. i didn't know if i had crossed some line or really alienated him or something. and he wrote back saying that he was just really busy, not ignoring me on purpose. thank GOD. we decided to meet up this past sunday, and basically it was facebook 101 in an hour. and he did the sweetest thing - he brought in a slice of cheesecake he made sunday night and gave it to me monday. totally made my week.

oh and another thing that i recently found out about through some strategic facebook creeping... one of my ex's is now a father. that's right, ladies and gentlemen, jake is a daddy. uh huh. YEAH. wow. that makes almost a dozen people i went to school with that have children. wth?? i feel so behind the times, i don't even have a boy interest at the moment and yet all these people are making babies and families! crazy.

thank god this is my last week... i'm going home saturday morning for spring break. there are only a few things i need/want to do: get a new phone, teach with dougie b, practice trumpet, relax and get some reading done. it will be so nice to not have to be going all out from 9am to 10pm.

speaking of, i just have to say that i hate being the music department's slave sometimes. i sat in the library for an hour today because a professor wanted a tape converted to a dvd. and monday night when i was walking down the hallway of the professor's offices, my name was called by no less than three of them to ask me questions. i suppose it will pay off, but right now i've got a paycheck and that's about it. i'm not complaining on that part, cause it's almost $400 in my account for this month.

so all i have to do is take a midterm tomorrow in my vocal pedagogy class, go to instrumental music, stats, pack, and go home saturday morning. YESSSS. unfortunately all my friends from home will still be in school, so hopefully i'll get to hang out with them at some point. hey, more time to spend with mr. b!

yes, this is a ridiculously long post. again, i am really trying to write more...! i have a poem i'm working on, maybe i'll get it up here sometime.

k bai.