Delightful Thanksgiving fun before the homework binge
I’m a really big fan of the Thanksgiving break for two reasons:
1. I get to catch up on all my homework
2. After Thanksgiving is over, it is Christmas (It is. Every day. Christmas.)
Okay, so it isn’t actually Christmas, but I mean, it basically is, right? All the Christmas stuff is out, everything is on sale, ABC Family’s 25 Days of Christmas starts, and the Christmas spirit is in the air!
This year, I had the privilege of spending my Thanksgiving in Rhode Island with my friend, Caraline. We feasted, shopped, tuned into ABC Family’s Harry Potter Weekend (ABC Family is really nailing it with this holiday stuff), and did homework. A lot of homework. It’s funny how homework just seems to magically multiply during this time of year. One moment, you’re caught up with work, everything is fine and dandy, and then you see something out of the corner of your eye and turn around, and KABLAM. Homework. Everywhere. So much of it.
Do you remember a long, long time ago when I was struggling with my music class? Update: I’m still struggling. BUT! Something amazing happened while I was doing homework over break. I think I might have actually started to…
enjoy…
learning…
about music history.
CRAZY, I KNOW.
So there I was, sitting at Caraline’s kitchen table, working on a group presentation. We were presenting on piano music during the Romantic era. I had been assigned to research Beethoven, who was seen as one of the key figures, if not the key figure of the end of the Classical era and the beginning of the Romantic era. So with heavy feet and a big frown, I poured myself a big cup of coffee and sat down at the table to work. A half hour or so passed, and I found that I didn’t totally hate what I was researching. I mean, I didn’t love it, and it sure wasn’t as interesting as the Chopped marathon on the Food Network, but I was mildly interested.
Time passed, and I found that I was beginning to take a genuine interest in what I was studying. I, myself, wanted to find out more information, not because a professor told me to, but because I just wanted to know. I wanted to know how the work of one single person lead to the dawn of a new era. And I wanted to know what it was about Beethoven’s music that makes it so revolutionary and amazing to the people living in the 19th century. And THEN I thought to myself, this is so fascinating, and also so awesome because not even a month ago, I wanted absolutely nothing to do with this class. Yet there I was, hunched over my computer like I vulture over a hunk of meat, for over two hours, with a genuine interest in music history, researching Beethoven and piano technology and philosophical thought of the Romantic era and all sorts of crazy music history things.
I know this all sounds a little cheesy, and way too good to be true, but you know what? It feels good. It feels good to overcome something you were struggling with, or that you didn’t want to do. And it feels really good to look back at a few months ago, when my music history class made me feel like I was running down the stairs backwards, and to acknowledge that since then, in just a few months, I’ve come pretty darn far.