Winter break highlight: visiting a store called PUPPIES.
Hey y’all, it’s been a while! After three and a half weeks of lounging around at home in the warm weather (I hope you all enjoyed your cold snap, the weather in Anchorage was about 40 degrees. Nice!), watching Breaking Bad and pursuing various crafty endeavors (arm knitting, anyone? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sqvC1xlm86U&feature=youtu.be), I’m finally back on campus. As much as I loved spending time at home, it feels nice to turn my brain back on and start class again. I think this semester is going to be super exciting; my classes are challenging, but interesting, I have a lot of big events on my calendar, and, after this semester is over, I’m going to be spending the summer here in Worcester.
Last semester, I wasn’t very thrilled about my classes at all. Most of them were prerequisites that I had to take so I can take the more exciting stuff further down the road. This semester, I’m not taking the most advanced, exciting classes ever, but I’m still really satisfied with them. I’m most nervous to take Intro to Music Theory, because although I’ve been playing music for quite a few years, I know absolutely nothing about music theory. So as you can imagine, my first day of class was terrifying.
I had absolutely no idea what to expect. I didn’t know what level all the other students would be at, or what I would be expected to do or know on the first day, or what we would be covering in the class. All I knew is that I was completely clueless. But that’s why it’s an intro class, right? …Right?
The professor kicked off the class with counterpoint, which involves writing a new line of music that harmonizes with a given line of music. It isn’t too bad, except
Music Theory day two, and lots and lots of notes about what you can and can’t do with counterpoint.
for the pages and pages and pages of rules that you have to follow. It’s kind of like a game, but there isn’t one true, right answer. Counterpoint was really challenging for me, but also a strangely good time.
I think my most challenging class of the semester is going to be Intermediate Spanish. I’ve had a really limited Spanish education; I took Spanish online in high school (terrible idea) and over the summer, I took two accelerated semesters of elementary Spanish. In relation to the rest of my peers, I’ve spent a very, very small amount of time in the classroom, and I don’t really know what to expect. So you can imagine how terrified I was when the professor came in the room babbling at lightning-speed in perfect Spanish. I was intimidated, but somehow managed to follow what was going on. I know that this will get less scary with time and I’ll get the hang of it.
So overall, things here are solidly good. In a few weeks, I’m headed to an improv competition in Boston, later in the semester, I’ll be playing at Mechanic’s Hall with the Clark Concert Band, and at the end of the semester I’ll be playing in Clark Musical Theater’s production of Legally Blonde.
What a semester, right?