Wow, that means I'll be a senior in less than a year and will need to start figuring out what to do next. It still feels like I just filled out my applications for college and now I have to start figuring out if I'm going to go to grad school or start working. It really does go by fast, doesn't it?
A couple of weeks before I started school, I dropped one of my classes to bring my credit load down to 16 (I haven't had a credit load this low since freshman year). I thought that I would be able to take it easy this semester since I'm still recovering from the 19-credit/sophomore portfolio shock. I couldn't be more wrong. Due to several of my classes, such as the switch from Schola Cantorum to Symphonic Choir and my music ed. classes becoming much more hands-on, I'm more stressed with 16 credits than I was with 19 credits and a portfolio. I need to stop thinking that I'm going to have an easy semester at WCC. Apparently, that's never going to happen...
Right when I started school, I already figured out that Symphonic Choir was going to be a HUGE commitment. The Saturday after we started school, we ended up having an 8 hour rehearsal to get ready for a weekend of concerts several weeks later. This brought me back to when I was in All State and All Eastern (we had several days worth of 8 hr rehearsals). After doing one 8 hour rehearsal in Symphonic, I don't know how the hell I did it for several days in high school without dying of exhaustion...
The gruesome Saturday rehearsal and several added hours during the week were worth it though. I performed on Friday and Saturday with the NJ Symphonic Orchestra at the NJPAC (also an All State memory)! We received huge standing ovations for each performance. I never had so much fun singing in a concert and I can't wait to sing Beethoven's 9th again at a United Nations conference (that will be aired in Asia!) in a couple of weeks!
As a junior music ed. major, this year I'll be stepping away from the research books and into the classroom to teach for the first time. I'm currently in Praxis in Secondary Music which is basically a student teaching in training course (in other words, I'm dipping my foot in the river instead of being thrown into it without swimmies). Since I'm in secondary music, I get to teach middle school first. I'm with two other classmates and when we observed a couple of weeks ago, we were scared that the kids were going to eat us alive (I was trying to get over the fear of several of the girls being taller than me...). However, they were really nice (and full of energy) and the teacher is going to be fun to work with. I will be teaching 6th, 7th, and 8th grade chorus and I already won over the girls for wearing a what they call an "extremely stylish shirt." Plus, after saying that I liked Spongebob, I was told to introduce myself to a teacher who has Spongebob posters all over the room. "She's in room 801. I think you two would get along very very well." I'll be starting to teach over there in a week. While I'm scared, I think I'm going to have a lot of fun.
How's the apartment? Well, it's definitely making me like WCC even more because it's quiet and I actually have some privacy now. Although, when school started, I could hear people singing downstairs but I eventually convinced myself that it was all in my head. After 2 years of hearing people blast high notes in my dorm room, I can still hear it in my head sometimes.
The apartment has also made me appreciate the little things more, like having a stove and oven, a dishwasher, a washer and dryer, and being able to call friends to kill bugs for me (there was a yellow jacket in my apartment a few days ago...and I was all alone.). Not having a washer and dryer is especially annoying because the closest laundromat is a 10-15 min walk away. I never thought that clothes were heavy, but by the time I managed to drag my clothes there and back, my arms were killing me (I never thought that I could get buff just by carrying my laundry). Not to mention in costs me between $5-$10 just to wash and dry my clothes.
I hope you're all doing well! Jess and Vinny, my mom and Becca told me about the wonderful news! Congratulations!!! I'm so happy for you!
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