flight of the bumble bee

There was no beginning to this semester. We were just thrown right into the middle, from the very first day. From that day on, there has been so much to do that's it's just not physically possible to do it all. It's ridiculous. You almost have to laugh. Why do we have so much to do? Do we do it to ourselves on purpose? Is it a musician thing? Is it the fault of the teachers at the music school? Is it the only way to beat off the competition? Never mind. It doesn't matter why. That's not the point.

What's interesting to me right now is in how we deal with it.
I rush, rush, from thing to thing. Music building, quad, music building, smith, home, IMPE, back home, music bldg. Working. Practicing. Trying to keep things clean in my room and around the apartment. Trying to make sure I pack lunches and have food for dinner. But still receipts and bank-statements pile up on my desk and chamber assignments loom over my shoulder. Books I was meaning to read go unread. People I've been meaning to talk to go uncontacted. It's just not possible, but yet, I struggle constantly in the effort to keep up. It's silly exciting!

There's this tendency to think that staying out at the music building late at night will help get things done. The actual result is nothing like this. It is still impossible to get everything done, because that's just the way life is right now, but now on top of that you're losing sleep. Colleen suggested that we need to face the fact that we won't feel done at the end of the day and force ourselves to go to sleep anyway. This would be in the best interest of our health.

You see, there's this body to keep in mind too. Because it really isn't all just work, work, work. It's actually more like work, work, work, CRASHHH!!, work, work, work, worKCRASHHH!!, work... And by "crash" I mean things like 1) losing consciouness for three hours in the middle of the afternoon, which we call "taking a nap," but is really more of a overt rebellion of the body against the mind, or 2) having a temporary depressive episode, such as breaking down crying for no particular reason and needing some good friend to come along and pull you back up into the stream of productivity. Crashing is an interruption from working, and completely throws off your groove, but it's pretty much part of the cycle.

I realize that the amount of drive and planning that has to go into maintaining this level of business may make us seem up-tight from the outside. It is exhillerating, though, and this is what breeds opportunity, my friends.

Considering I didn't even have time to write this entry, I now must run off to the music building (of all places!) and try to get in some quality recording time for my Peabody audition CD. If I succeed, it will be the first day in over a week that I've been trying. Wish me luck!

my morning

In my creative writing class today, we did this in-class writing activity for which we were instructed to describe in detail what we had done that morning. It was to be a blow-by-blow account covering the period of the time from when we had woken up until we had made it to class (it was 9:30am). Fun assignment. Easy. Telling, too. It’s one thing to write what you did. It’s another thing to hear other people read what they wrote and to hear what they have to say about what you wrote. People have different perspectives.

The exercise was meant to show that the reader can come to know the character through observing details about what he/she does rather than needing explanations of the character’s psyche. It’s how we come to know people in our daily lives anyway. The weird part was that, after hearing my morning story, the other people in the class were able to make conclusions about my personality that I hadn’t even been directly meaning to convey.

“I set two alarms, one by my bed so I can snooze a few times in preparation for the idea of waking up, and one across the room that’s for real. Today I was up at 8:15.

I don’t like to take a shower first thing, or even change, because I’m always cold. First thing this morning I threw on a sweatshirt and ambled out to the kitchen to have cereal—müslix with yogurt.

My roommate was already up, heading out to the door. I talked with her a bit as I packed tuna fish for today’s lunch. She woke up this morning already so stressed out by school that she was breaking down. She wanted to know if I’d be back to the apartment during the day today so I could pick up mail from the office. She hadn’t been home during the day at all this week, poor thing. Today I won’t either.

That meant packing my backpack for the whole day: food, books for creative writing, notebook, French books to study at the café if I find time. Music books are already at school. And still I forgot to bring harp strings.

After getting dressed and bundling up in coat and scarf, I waited for the bus from inside the apartment. From there, because we’re so close to the street, you can see it coming and have time to get out there to catch it. I take the 13 Silver from Atrium apartments up on Lincoln to the transit plaza on Wright st. I have to leave 30 minutes early for class.”

It was a pretty true account of what sorts of things generally occupy my attention in the morning before leaving for class.

I got pegged as a “planner.” Hmm.

Hearing it put that way made me feel categorized. “Control freak.” “Obsessive compulsive.” Categories are generally useful ways to manage information in your mind, but you don’t usually categorize yourself. I’ve always just seen it as: planning things out in the morning helps me make better use of the limited amount of time that I have to work with in the day and to juggle all the things I have to accomplish. I am a planner, it’s true. Now I’m wondering if this need to have so much control over my life is a handicap. Maybe this creates undue stress when things slip out of my control. But isn’t that the case for everybody? Am I too rigid? Colleen once observed about me “You seem to want the image that comes with being someone who is wild and reckless without actually having to risk any of the consequences.” I’m a planner and I’m also very careful. Hmm…

good teachers

I have some thoughts about what makes a good teacher. I feel I have enough experience to have an opinion on this subject, now that I've had so many different teachers for so many different classes, all of them somewhere on the spectrum between astoundingly inspirational and just plain terrible. I've also done a bit of teaching myself.

To be a good teacher, it's nice to have thorough knowledge of the subject you are teaching and also a genuine love of that subject. It's best if you can be comfortable enough to let that love and excitement that you have show through, because it really helps. I had a conducting teacher once who taught our class three times a week at 8:00am. That's always a brutal hour for a class, but she was consistently very high-energy and enthousiastic, clearly very passionate about the subject. By the end of the semester, her energy had brought us to the point where we were conducting Faure's Requiem--one of the most rewarding musical experiences I've had. Admittedly, though, sometimes enthousiasm is not enough to cut it and can actually be annoying. And sometimes you can be a perfectly effective teacher with hardly any enthousiasm at all. I had this great French teacher once who seemed so blasé about teaching our class that it was actually funny. Every so often, she would just roll her eyes and threaten, under her breath, to jump out the window so she wouldn't have to deal with us anymore. But she was from France, and French was in her blood and in her every word. That was intriguing, maybe enough to take the place of the need for overt enthousiasm.

All that is almost beside the point, though, when it comes to attitude. I think the most important thing for a good teacher to have is the right attitude toward the students. You have to believe that your students want to learn. Even if they actually don't want to learn, there is no other way to go about it. I hate those teachers that present this attitude of "Hey guys, I know none of you wants to be here. You're just in it for the grade. I'm on your side: I don't want to be here either." I don't find that endearing. I find it stupid. The other attitude I hate is "I know none of you wants to be here, so in order to get anything out of you, I have to threaten you, because if left to your own devices you will certainly slack off." You need to respect your students as people, good people, curious people.

College students are busy people. The life style we lead is one of having to balance all the different demands on our time coming from all our different classes and other obligations. There is always more to do than can realistically be done, assuming you want to do it all to the best of your ability. Thus, things have to be prioritized. In order for an assignment to reach the status of high priority, it should be challenging and inspiring. Somebody has to convince me that it is worthwhile, that it will be a benefit to my education. They have to convince me that they care that I do the assignment. When things don't get done, it's not necessarily because I'm slacking! I appreciate it when teachers set up an environment that inspires me to care about my assignments. Last semester, the homework for my French class was the same all the time: workbook pages that always followed the same format. Long lists of vocab that we couldn't hope to memorize. We never were tested on the vocab. I once got full-credit for a workbook assignment that I didn't even finish. I also got full credit for a composition that wasn't even on the right subject. Clearly nobody cared about those assignments or about really learning the material. I don't think I actually learned anything that semester. On the other hand, in my theory class last semester, I came to school one day, toward the very end of things, scared to death about a paper I had just started writing way too late. Sympathizing with me, my teacher offered to hold a class discussion about my paper topic and answer any questions I had until I had been assured that I was heading in the right direction and could continue confidently. For that and many, many other reasons, he was one of the best teachers I've ever had.

Challenge us. Make us answer questions in class at random. Make us speak up so often that it's no longer scary. Make us really think about the material. Encourage independent thinking and not just regurgitation of facts. Care about us. Respect us. Don't be threatening, just positive and encouraging, but demand a high level of achievement. Those are the good teachers.

comfort zone

Here is a lens to look through for a moment: life is a game of tug-of-war between stability and change.

On one side of the rope, there is your comfort zone, where things are familiar and predictable. It’s the realm where you have good friends and family whom you understand and who understand you. It’s where all your things are. It’s your daily schedule. It’s the food and the culture and the language you grew up with. It’s activities that you’ve done a million times before. It’s warm and cozy--a place to come home to. It’s where you can feel safe enough to let down your defenses and fall asleep at night.

Pulling on the other side is change--everything new and unfamiliar. It can be anything unexpected or anything you have no experience dealing with. A place you haven’t been to before. A way of thinking that’s foreign from your own. People you don’t know. New issues between old friends. Having to do something you have never done before. The loss of something you had come to take for granted. A new situation. This is the source of all stress and at the same time the stuff of life.

We tend to think of stress and change as a bad thing. Much of the time, at least on a short-term scale while it’s happening, it does feel bad. It’s not pleasant to be unsure, which is what facing change necessarily entails. You’re not sure if you’ll handle it right or if you’ll make a fool of yourself and screw things up. Or maybe it feels completely out of your control and you just brace yourself and wonder what kind of damage you will suffer by it. You want to just run back and hide in your comfort zone because it’s so safe there. But in the long-term, we learn and grow from the change. This is how we gain experience: by having experiences we haven’t had yet. This is how we develop skills: by facing tasks we haven’t mastered. This is how we learn: by contemplating things that are strange and different.

I guess there are different degrees of stress, because a certain level of it is usually welcomed. As living, breathing humans, we have an inate desire to seek out challenges. Why else do we move away from home and go to college? We want to explore and grow. Many times we literally invite the uncertainty into our lives, because it’s simply more exciting and interesting that way. People have varying preferences for how much they want to stress themselves out. Some are addicted to it... And though you do have some amount of control over how much change there is in your life, there will always be times when change and stress will sneak up on you whether you wanted it or not.

The mindset I want to impart here, to readers but also to myself, is that this is an integral part of life. Change rears its head and makes things all unstable temporarily, but it’s not like getting past it will solve everything, because there will routinely be some sort of newness or change popping up like that. You can’t escape it. You wouldn’t want to escape it. The second part of the mindset is that this change is ultimately good. Reason 1 why it’s good: you learn from it. Reason 2, and arguably the more satisfying reason: when you are jostled out of your comfort zone, you are suddenly handed the chance to look back and see in a whole new way how beautiful and sweet that comfort zone is to you. Suddenly everything is sizzling and alive. Taking things for granted is boring.

In that vein, I would like to offer up a heartfelt appreciation for everything and everyone that I realize has come to mean stability in my life. As a whole: the music school. To all my musician friends, colleagues, and especially roommates--I love you all! What a life we lead. Every moment of free time during the day is a moment that could/should be spent practicing. There’s always something to do. Always a glamorous and lofty goal in mind--a performance, an audition, a summer program touring around Europe. Always we strive to make our time more efficient, whether we always succeed at that or not. I love my harp. I love that after uncountable hours spent cradling it on my shoulder, practicing has passed out of that realm of a drudging sense of duty to a soothing sense of familiarity. It feels good. It’s something I’m in control of. I don’t mind being alone to practice--I thrive off of it. So, there’s that fiercesome sense of independence that we all have to have, and then the equally fierce sense of community. We toil away in our isolated practice rooms, then emerge to chat in the halls (more often than not, the person you pass on your way down the stairs is someone you at least recognize), and eventually come together for orchestra rehearsals to create music on a larger scale than any of us could hope to do alone. David, thanks for kick-starting the semester with a great conducting recital!

I also love my roommates for their kindness and thoughtfulness. I love their undying devotion to morals and their sensitivity. I love the work ethic that hangs thick in the air, always pushing to accomplish more and soak up more knowledge. I love their cooking and especially their baking. I love the sense of family in our apartment, which I think may be something relatively rare. I don’t want to take any of it for granted.

quote of the day

"There are four ways, and only four ways, in which we have contact with the world. We are evaluated and classified by these four contacts: what we do, how we look, what we say, and how we say it."
- Dale Carnegie, author and educator (1888-1955)

over the rainbow

I'm back in Chambana!

Classes will start on Tuesday, after MLK day. I am content to let that day come when it does. I am neither frightened by it nor do I await it impatiently. I am perfectly happy where I am right now.

Life seems to be more a collection of stories now, like a collage, rather than an overarching idea.

First, there's my driver's licence. My precious driver's licence. My symbol of freedom. It has been with me through good times and bad, since that beautiful moment five years ago when they first printed it up and gave me free roam of the streets. Now it is expired, according to the date printed in tiny red letters at the top of the card. I would probably never have noticed if the airport ticket attendant in San Francisco had not drawn my attention to it. This is good, because now I know I need to go renew it. This is also bad, due largely to the fact that it was the airport attendant who discovered it. I suddenly was labeled as "not holding a valid ID," and was sent to the special line of security. This is such a high level of security that I had to go through a whole machine that puffed air at me. THEN they looked through my stuff and swabbed it all with little pieces of cloth. Now that's safety.

Then there are roommates, who both were there to pick me up at the airport! And what is the first thing I do upon returning? Go midnight-grocery-shopping at Meijer with my dear Colleen and Anne. We're all together, AND we have food for at least a week. What more could you ask for? I think it actually scared Colleen that I had my semester meal plans all written down in a list. I don't think she realized the extent of the planning I have done until she saw it. I actually know what dinners I'm going to make, every week, for the rest of the semester. My first one was a great success: Moroccan stuffed peppers and Baba Yaga Ganouj. (I'm not joking, even though I realize it sounds ridiculous. Everything I write is the truth.)

Next there's the hottub... ahhhhh.

Practicing too. Practicing in the music building. Taking the bus to get there. Leisurely waking up before taking the bus. Practicing feels really good right now. I had some technical break-throughs last semester, and now that they have had time to sink in over break I feel like I can conquer the world. Bring it on.

Friends. Reunited with Colleen, Anne, Joe, Dan, Keturah, Kyra, Vince, Jing-I... more to come. Elimidate is a terribly stupid show, but admittedly fun to laugh at. Arrested Development is just plain good. Lying around like slugs on the couches doing nothing but goofing off until 4am is something I missed. Talking about music, classes, musician gossip, summer festivals, sudoku, and who can make the longest list of "special friends," all hours of the day. Joe and his camera and his photo-editing software and pictures he took over break are all here in the same place! Anne viciously bakes sweets as if we had to go through some sort of quota of flour, butter, and sugar usage each day. As a result, we all get to eat homemade chocolate croissants and walnut brownies.

Nothing's very serious right now. I feel like I'm riding on a wave, easing back into my last semester of college. My last semester. Here we go....

contented

Something clicked finally last night.

And finally, beginning at that point in time and not one moment earlier, I feel like I'm psychologically ready to do this last semester of school.

Things are right in the world again. The balance is back.
I can love openly, without feeling threatened or scornful. I guess I got scared that love may be a scarce commodity. I felt like I was groping in thin air, until I wasn't even sure what love was anymore.
I'm feeling more at peace with having two lives: one at school and one with my family. I can love both. Even though they are very different, they don't have to be in conflict. They are simply two dimensions of myself.
I am feeling more accepting of others, maybe because I'm finding new ways to understand them. I feel like I have a chance at handling future situations with a little more maturity.
I feel more at peace with the idea of taking classes. I remembered why it is I like to learn things and why I love the feeling of being productive. I'm really excited about this creative writing class I'm going to be taking, in particular. I've already started ordering my books and collecting notebooks and post-it notes and thinking about how I'm going to try to do my homework ahead of time--now that's the Beth we know.

But I don't think it's just a return to a previous state of being, though it does feel more familiar. It's one that's been wisened by experience.

Any chance that this healed and restored state will last?

I don't know. Things always seem to fall apart by the end of the semester. Maybe it's natural. I know there will always be more to grow. Muscles don't get stronger until you break them down so they can rebuild. Maybe hearts and minds don't either unless you shake them up.

resolutions

I make new year's resolutions every year. I think it's a fun tradition. I actually type them up and print them out and everything. It helps me get perspective. I can remind myself of what are the important things to focus on. I can also see how far I've come in the past and where I'm trying to head in the future. They aren't the same every year. I design them so that they are reasonable goals that I can achieve rather than magical wishes. Someone suggested that this approach is similar to telling your pet to do what it's already doing and thinking that you have trained it. Maybe there are a lot of things in there that I would have done anyway, but only because I believe in always thinking about how to improve myself. There still is a point to making them explicit, just to proverbially dust my mind out and clarify my goals for myself. So, I'm not going to resolve to look like a super model every day, become a published novelist this year, and make a gourmet meal every week because it's not going to happen, and I don't think rigid ultimatums are the point. My resolutions are more about refining my perspective on how I approach things.

I thought about posting them up here, but quickly vetoed that idea. There's too much stuff in there that alludes to things I regret about last year and wouldn't want to make public. I took a history class once in which our TA enunciated this concept very well. He said that by studying the kinds of laws that civilizations made, you can infer the kinds of things that people did to offend each other enough to feel that it was worth making a law to prevent. If you find a tablet that reads "Any man who steals another's chicken will owe that man 30 whatever-ancient--units-of-currency-is-applicable and a week's service," it means that people were stealing chickens and it was a problem. By the same token, there are some resolutions I have made about my approach to life which are in direct response to things I think I probably should not have done.

I guess there are a few things harmless enough to share. One is "I resolve not to put up with busy work." I am always finding myself procrastinating on homework that I don't want to do. Noteable instances of this from last semester were all the French workbook assignments I had to do. They were so boring and mundane and stupid, and our teacher barely even looked at them when we handed them in! So I would put it off until the night before it was due and then gripe and complain for an hour or two while I tediously did the whole assignment in one sitting. That seriously got in the way of my enjoyment of learning the French language. But I've decided that life shouldn't have to be like that! I don't have time to waste on pretending that grades and credits are a worthy goal to work toward. School should inform my life, not get in the way of it. I'm learning French so that I can go live in France and be able to communicate with the people there. I am not learning it so that I can pass the class. So if the assignment is one that's not just busy work, that is going to be informative and useful, then face it head on and give it your passion and attention, but if it's not, then do something about it! Sometimes procrastination is not just about laziness. It can be a sign that you're expecting yourself to do things that you don't really think are valuable pursuits.

Another one of my resolutions is also about France. In March, it will be time for me to write to Isabelle Perrin and tell her that I really do want to come study with her in Paris and find out from her either a definite yes or no. She said by then she will know for sure if she has space in her studio or not, but I think she's also making me wait so that I will have thought harder about whether I want to go for sure or not. Admittedly, in the time since I returned from France last August, I have had doubts. I have asked myself why I am proposing to send myself to a foreign country far away from everything I know and live there for an indefinite period of time when I know for sure that I will experience terrible feelings of loneliness and stress and anxiety in the process. But I know that letting those emotions sway my final decision would not be the right thing to do. I resolve to say yes to France, because it's going to be an invaluable opportunity. I just need to have faith in that.

The rest are about people and how I relate to them. Some are specific people and some more general. By way of a vague summary, I don't think you should ignore the bad things that you see in people, but you have to make sure you're still seeing the good things too.
Talking about people behind their backs should only be done constructively, not disparagingly.
And I have a bit of a reputation for saying things bluntly. It can be a refreshing character trait, but I'm not going to pretend it's always a good thing. I want to tone down on that a little bit.
Another resolution is to make sure I learn from my past mistakes. This means being analytical enough of my past to learn the lessons that life has taught me.

Okay, there are some things to think about. Check out my roommates', Anne's and Colleen's, Xanga and LiveJournal for some thoughtful insights about bringing in the future while also incorporating the past.