18 posts tagged “school”

There is a coffeeshop on the campus of my school.  Needless to say, I made its aquiantance my first day and have continued to go there--well, more frequently than I ought.  The head barista of this shop is always there: she opens the place up at 7-something and closes it at 6 Monday through Friday.  She--and the staff--are pleasant people who'll remember you and your favorite drink.  They're also delightfully unhurried, which is maddening if you're rushing to class, but it's a good place to slow down and relax for the five-ten minutes it will take to make your drink.  Besides, I like the non-corporate-"MUST HAVE DRINK READY IN THREE MINUTES" feel.

We've had some most un-cowtownlike weather here for the last two weeks: cool, rainy, damp.  We went nine days without any real sun, which is probably a record. 

A few days ago, I stopped by the coffeeshop for a much-needed mocha.  The head barista had a little space heater going by her stool, and a blanket that she set back on the stool when she got up to take my order.  The coffeeshop tends to be really cool, even by my standards, so it must be quite chilly to anyone originally from the South.

When I commented on the blanket and heater, the barista laughed.

"Girl, you should've seen me when I came in this morning.  I forgot my umbrella, and I was SOAKED by the time I got in here.  And you know how it's always cold in here?"

I nodded wholeheartedly.  "Good grief, you must have been freezing."

"Yeah, I was.  I got a coffee, but I was dripping wet and just couldn't get warm.  Then one of the professors came in.  She noticed that I was all wet, y'know?  So she asked if I could maybe go home and get a change of clothes, but I'm here by myself today.  I made her her drink, but she would you believe this?  She came back a few minutes later with the space heater and a blanket from her office and told me I could just give them back when she comes by for her drink tomorrow morning."

Y'know, that warmed the cockles of my cranky fifth-week-of-the-semester heart.  How many people--much less people of different work "ranks", like the professor and this barista--would haul a space heater and blanket back across a puddle-laden campus just because she wanted to make sure the barista at the college's coffee shop didn't catch a chill?

I promise a real post...sometime soon.

This week I opened the store for 5 days straight.  The customers were cranky, the tasks to be done too many for the short staffing and monotonous to boot.  Yet I'd periodically find myself scanning out product/dealing with an idjit customer/listening to the latest in moronic store policy with a goofy grin on my face.  Why?

In no order whatsoever:

-I'm going to a "real" university in the fall.  Yes, me.  Yes, me, UbiCaritas.  Registered for classes and everything, I am.  Yeah.

-Oooooh, but my paycheck was nice this week.  It will be nice next week, too.  The credit card balance is sliding lower and lower...

-A dear friend is expecting her first kid on August 4th.  Me, I'm kinda hoping he shows up two days later, the 6th being this diva's birthday and all.  I'm going to be Auntie UbiCaritas...and let me tell you that that makes me grin obnoxiously!  Must find a name for the kid for the blog.  Hmm.

-Voice workshops with voice lessons two days in a row and masterclasses and what-have-you.  What's not to like?

I've tried to write this post at least five times, and it never comes out properly. 

At the end of this past spring semester, I finished my fourth semester at the community college where I've been studying.  I've been incredibly blessed to have had the teachers I've had: how many college voice instructors wouldn't even crack a smile when a person walked into her office and said, "I'm a nursing major, but I've decided to change to voice, and how do I do that?"  And my theory teachers have been naught but fantastic.  There have been others, too: the choir director who taught me how to be a section leader, the accompanists who've stretched me as a musician...the list goes on and on.

Howesomever, this college, being, as it is, a community college, does not offer a bachelor's degree.  I've finished over half the hours I'll need for that degree, but there isn't anything else for me to take at this level.

In March, I auditioned for the music program at a university in Fort Worth.  There is a voice teacher there under whom I'd like to study: I sang for her in a master class once and very much liked her insights and style. 

I walked into a hall with stunning acoustics and sang my head off.  I talked to instructors, and left.  Couldn't decide how well I'd done.  The accompanist said I had done well.  My heart said I'd done well.  My head said that it stank.  ("Stank," of course, being a technical musical term.)

A few weeks later, I heard that I'd gotten in.  All I needed to do was find a way to pay for it.  Did I mention that this college is private and that they charge nearly 18 grand a year?

I spent the next month getting together paperwork to get my financial aid status considered separately from that of my parents.  That was an enlightening but extremely stressful process.  All sorts of tap-dancing skeletons got hauled out of closets.  I won't go into details here.  However, if anyone reading this would like some pointers on getting independent student status when he or she is under 23 years of age, PM me and I'll be happy to share what I've learned.

A few weeks ago, I finally heard back from Texas Wesleyan (the school to which I applied).  The financial aid folks had approved my request...and I'll be heading for Wesleyan in the fall.  Orientation was last Saturday, and I'm meeting with the head of the music department next week to get a class schedule set up.  Come September, I, UbiCaritas, will be a college junior.  I am still having a hard time believing this.  Throughout the audition/financial aid process I kept expecting someone to call and say, "Oh, sorry, we didn't mean you, wrong person."  I think a part of me still expects that call.  It's a much smaller part than it used to be, though.

Now if you'll pardon me, I'm off for a celebratory lunch and bookstore run with my adopted family.  ("Adopted family" is the best description I've come up with for people who aren't officially family but who treat me like a daughter.  They're in town, and it's so nice to see them!)

Miscellaneous quotes from the last few weeks:

In vocal diction:

Me: "Ah, that must be one of those vowel differences between the East Coast and Texas."

StudentWhoShallRemainNameless: "The East Coast?  Like, California?"

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Overheard in a recital hall:

(student is quietly playing an extremely famous piece from Bach's Well Tempered Clavier--you know, the one that's the basis for the Gounod "Ave Maria"--while other students chat in a far corner)

Teacher, walking in, to piano student: "Are you actually practicing?"

Student, drily: "No, I'm composing."

Most of us recognize this as a mildly snarky give-and-take, except...

StudentWhoShallRemainNameless, ButWhoIsAMusicMajor: "Wow, it sounds really nice.  What do you call it?"

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There is an upside to the current economic (specifically, housing market) mess.

It has now ben at least two months since a certain well-meaning family member has gently suggested that I should knock off music in favor of something more obviously profitable, such as

(wait for it)

real estate.

Heh.

There is a time for pushing yourself to--and past--certain limits.  "I can never," you might say, take college algebra.  Or even begin to do the homework for it.  Or study for, and perhaps even pass, a test in that class.  Yet you put your derriere in a seat in front of a desk, unplug your computer's wireless card, and start studying.  And then you take that test, and though you may be in no danger of breaking the curve, you'll have passed it with an acceptable grade.

There are times when it seems like you are just too damn tired to study any more about the Baroque and its music, its art, its literature, its composers.  You don't want to take another note, you don't want to reread your notes for the seventeenth time, and, most especially, you don't want to try to explain the concepts of monody and madrigal and their operatic import.  Ten minutes later, you're writing a reasonably comprehensable paragraph on just that.

There are times when even the idea of a test in vocal diction--a class generally considered to be pretty darned easy--is completely intimidating and you feel like you can't possibly remember the forward vowels to save your life.

When those times all come together in the same week, several things will happen.

First, if you do persist and study and study some more, the gradebooks will say Nice Things about you.

Second, you will get a high not dissimilar to that of a runner's high; your brain has been pushed to its limits, and that actually feels rather good.

Third: by Friday, you will be sufficiently worn that you will plan deliberately to spend the evening at home.  You will take a hot bath, slap some green goo on your face, give yourself a mani/pedi and indulge in some coffee-flavored ice cream.  The latter, incidentally, must have been considered ambrosia by the ancient Greeks.  No other substance can possibly touch it for utter comfort-food-yumminess.

Yeah.

I spent New Year's Eve moving.  Bleh.  My new room, which is twice the size of the old and faces west (lovely sunshine), is on the second floor.  Themaureencorps and shewhomustbeobeyed helped schlep the books, the shelves, the books, the desk and bed, the books, and the books over to the new place and even up the two flights of stairs.  Nothing like moving to make one want to trim down one's library.  And for the record: opera scores, due to the fact that they can be packed more densely into a box than most books (uniform size) are HEAVY.

I woke up on New Year's Day feeling as though I'd been hit by not one, but two semis.  Fever, chills, aches, sore throat, general congestion et all: not good.  Two weeks later, I still felt as though I'd gargled with broken glass.

Yeah.  Strep.  Not fun.  Don't recommend at all.

Feeling better now.  Broad-spectrum antibiotics are lovely things.  Oh, and incidentally: customers really aren't that bad if I've taken Vicodin before going on the bookfloor.

(Oh, fear not, 'twas just for two days until the antibiotics really kicked in.  While I will admit that I didn't mind the nutty customers at all when I took some pre-shift Vicodin, I didn't really like that the world wouldn't stop gently rocking back and forth.  I suspect that my coworkers are still giggling about those shifts.)

More blogging later.

There is a display of art in the theatre/arts building on campus.  The pictures range from reproductions of famous photograghs to portraits of children to modern art designs.  Each picture has a poem, written by the artist, hung beneath it.

There was one picture depicting what seemed to be the American assault on the island of Iwo Jima.  The poem underneath was nice, if unexceptional: all about sacrifices made for the sake of freedom, et all.

The thing that struck me was that, as I started to walked away, the form of the poem struck me as unusual and...distinctive.

Three lines per stanza, and very short stanzas.

I did a quick syllable count, and then I (belatedly, I confess) saw the title of the poem.

Yes.

This poem--hung under a picture from the Battle of Iwo Jima--was quite correctly titled, "A Haiku For Art Class."

I'm in the process of reading a collection of short stories by Alice Walker.  I'd read one of these stories before ("Everyday Use"), but the rest are all new to me.

Several things leap out at me while I'm reading this book.  First, that I wish I was reading this in a physical classroom rather than an online class.  I'd like to discuss Alice Walker with other people who are reading or have read some of her works.  I can understand some of what she is saying through her stories, but I'd like to get other perspectives on it.

Second, I think that the little I can understand of her work needs to be said.  She seems--so far, at least--to write exclusively about women and often from a woman's viewpoint, and to me, that's part of what makes her work fascinating.

At the same time, I wonder if she believes that all white people and all men are inherently malicious "in real life."

It's moments like these that I would love to sit in a real English class.  This online business is extremely convenient, but it isn't--and can't be--the same.

We'll see how this goes.  As y'all might have noticed, my posts have slowed drastically in the last couple of weeks.  I've been really busy with school; papers and fugues and assignments and oh, yeah, music--which is why I'm doing all this anyway--are all needing to be completed or learned NOW. 

Work has been a hair stressful, as they've cut everybody's hours drastically.  Those hour cuts mean that everyone is about as short-tempered as we are short-staffed.  We're cranky because each person is trying to do the work of two or three people, management is cranky because we're not meeting our sales plan (something like 5% more than we made last year--NOT GOING TO HAPPEN, people!) and they have to help with tasks like shelving, and the customers are a whole new level of snippy because they're worried about spending any money in this economy.  The fact that they're having to wait for customer service because of our low staffing just isn't helping.

Because of my hours at work being cut to 50%, I've been working extra time at a school job and picking up the occasional odd petsitting or woodcutting (if you're willing to pick up and cut wood yourself, you can sell it for $100 or so a cord) job.  I'm fortunate to have those options--many of my coworkers don't, and I really don't know how they're living on $80-$120 or so a week--but it means that I'm busier.

I'm even behind on emails, ferpetessake!  I have several emails--none urgent, but one important--that I've meant to answer for a week but haven't had the time.

In short, I'm going to try to post every day this month, and I'll see how it goes.  I do have some ideas for some "weekly feature" style posts, and I also have some work stories that I desperately want to type up for the amusement of readers, but then again, there's the whole "time" thing.

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Oh, and I just noticed that I've been blogging for a bit over a year now.  October 11 of '07 was the date of my first post.  I honestly didn't believe that I'd blog for this long, or that I'd "meet" as many cool people doing this as I have. 

I've noted that I haven't blogged much about music, and I've thought about why that is.  I think it's because I find it difficult to write coherently about something that is so precious to me.  I feel so much about it, but I have a hard time putting those thoughts and feelings--awe, joy, amazement, discovery--into words.