Wow, where to start. Well, yesterday wasn’t too bad. I’m taking an electronic music class this semester, which I’m very excited about and we had our first class. It made me even more excited honestly. Afterwards, I practiced which was pretty good. Then in our studio class, we played through our concertos in preparation for the concerto competition Saturday. I thought I did pretty good through the run through. I didn’t have quite as big memory slips, they should be easy to fix. There’s obviously some things I’d like to work out before Saturday, but I think I’m ready. Ready enough to give a performance I’ll be happy with.
Today, however, was a lot. My morning started with finding out that flute grad students were left out of the loop in recital scheduling. Everyone had access to a calendar with dates on Monday and were able to start filing out forms this morning…we found that out about 2ish hours after the forms were available. So I was scrambling to get schedules and find a time. Hopefully, I’ll get one I want. But I think more likely, it will be a time I don’t want and I’ll be unsure if my family could attend, as most dates are literally in the middle of the week. Not to mention, most of them are pretty early March and April, which means I don’t have a lot of time. I planned on memorizing a lot, and learning Chant de Linos, two things that I’m not sure I can do be early March. Not to mention having my own composition ready to go by then. So I was stressed, frustrated, and really upset. Then, there of course had to be a basketball game, so I couldn’t treat myself to parking across from the music building. So I head over to the church that won’t tow students to discover it’s full, so I had to park a long way down the road from the church 🙁 . I also didn’t have as much time to practice, as that time went to panicky scheduling a recital. I did get a bit of practice in, just running through my concerto and working a bit on Chant de Linos. I’ll likely have days of hours of practice ahead of me…I don’t know how to feel about that. BUT I did get some good news today. Before my band rehearsal, the conductor pulled me aside and basically said that one of their GTA’s is no longer going to be a GA for them this semester. The other band GTA’s have everything covered (as the assistantship is mostly conducting and helping with the bands), but they basically had an open spot money wise that he offered to me, as I was one of the unfortunate music students who lost the biology assistantship. So obviously I accepted, as anything is better than nothing, even though I will not get the assistantship in the fall, because again, it’s for conducting students and they definitely don’t want me conducting a band lol. Basically, the only duties I’d have are helping out if they get swamped, filing music and other easy things that a non-conductor can do. I’m really really appreciative and happy about it. It’ll really help me out. And then I obviously had to celebrate by getting some boba 🙂 .
The rest of my night has been getting ready for lessons next week, planning out my semester and things. Our professor has us fill out a goal sheet, which is really new to me and definitely something I struggle with. Goals aren’t easy for me and I don’t know why. I think it’s hard because I don’t really know what I want and that can be really stressful. It feels like everyone knows exactly what they want to do and how to get there, so they can make goals. But I don’t really know what I want, or maybe I should say “I don’t think what I want to do will ever be possible” so it’s hard. I don’t know what specifically I want to get better at through a semester, and who knows if I’ll even accomplish the goals. If I don’t accomplish them, for any reason, I’ll just be upset with myself. I really struggled to fill out the paper. Also, I spent honestly probably a good hour on it just to write down a couple sentences basically saying I don’t know what the heck I wanna do or how to do it. So yeah. Most of the questions were about how the goals we set for last semester are and what we want to do this semester. But again, I don’t really know. I’m aware that my dream is extremely unlikely. Not many people actually make it with what I want to do, especially flutists. Maybe I shouldn’t think about how it will only happen in my wildest dreams and start thinking about how to make it come true. It’ll take a lot of work though. I want to put in the work, I really, really do. But just starting is really difficult. I don’t know where to start or what to do. Then if I get an idea, my insecurity holds me back. It’s a frustrating cycle. So many people talk about goals as well and set them and it seems so easy for them. I just don’t get it I guess. I’m trying though, so there’s that.
Once I was finally finished with that, kind of, I decided to just relax. I didn’t practice a lot today, and I’m trying not to beat myself up about it because I was really stressed and overwhelmed this morning and could barely focus in the small practice session I did anyway. I pretty much just continued to binge this K-drama I’ve been watching, which is kinda embarrassing so I won’t say which one it was, even though I really liked it. And turns out the main male lead is a K-Pop idol as well, from JYP just like Stray Kids. After a search for their music, I did indeed recognize a few songs, so that was cool I guess. That’s about all for now, just a lot of strong emotions today which I don’t like. But that’s also life I guess.
by juniparker
