Finals Fun... err...

Finals Week: I had forgotten how much I love, yet hate this week of my life all at the same time.

You see, finals are a funny thing.  They are supposed to measure all that you've learned in one semester.  Really, all I think that they really measure are people's ability to stay up late and cram  an entire semester's worth of information into two days of studying.

In Jamestown, I was a hardcore procrastinator.  We're talking save a 10-page term paper until the night before it was due procrastinator (I got an A on it, in case you were wondering).  It never helped that I was always able to get good grades even though I procrastinated.  My procrastination was positively reinforced, and my grades never suffered as a result of my saving my work until the end.

During my second go-round, I decided to change my ways.  I wanted to get things done before they needed to be done so that I wouldn't stress out at the last minute.  I had it in my head to excel at my coursework without all the craziness involved in putting things off until the day before they were due. 

I succeeded at first.  I would actually read the assigned readings in my theory textbook, and did extra homework to practice, just for fun.  I did my listening assignments weeks ahead of time so that I could listen to them more than once before the quiz.  I wrote papers before they were due so that I would have time to edit and revise them. 

Things slowly deteriorated as the semester went on.  Music theory suddenly wasn't as hard, and I didn't feel like I would need to read the readings.  I didn't really do the listening assignments because we listened to most of the pieces in class.  I saved the papers because the ones I had to write weren't as difficult as psychology papers.  In short, I just got lazy. 

It's a bad idea to procrastinate studying for cumulative finals that make up a large percentage of your grade.  Luckily for me, most of my classes are cumulative in themselves, so it's not a whole bunch of review.  I mean, one can't study pieces of theory and have tests on it and then put it all together for a test.  It's like math: it builds upon itself.  And either you get it, or you don't.

I have had a decent finals schedule: 1 last week, 2 Saturday, 1 Monday, and 2 today.  Yes, final exams start on Saturdays here.  At 7:30 am.  No, I'm not kidding.  I'm grateful I didn't have one Saturday 7:30.  Gross.  Everything has gone mostly fine.  I take my theory exam in 20 minutes.

To me, though, the most important final exam isn't an exam at all.  It's a performance jury.  Every performance major in every area has to show the semester's progress by performing for all of the faculty in the department.  As a freshman, I had to have 6 songs prepared, of which I would sing 2.  The performer picks the first and the faculty picks the second. 

Needless to say, I was nervous.  Always am. I always feel like I'm not going to live up to the faculty's expectations of me.  I psyche myself out.  Strangely enough, though, I wasn't nearly as nervous as I usually am.  I'm not sure if it's because I'm getting more comfortable with performing, or with the faculty, or if I was just well-prepared enough, but the fact that I wasn't nervous freaked me out...

That's beside the point.  I walked in, and received a very warm welcome.  They asked me what I would sing, and I surprised them by introducing a musical theatre piece by Stephen Sondheim.  Upon the pronouncement, the opera director pumped her fists in the air with excitement.  I performed the piece nearly perfectly, and upon its completion, one professor told me never to sing that song again because it made her cry.  Another said that she was so happy that they had me here at CU.  The second song was technically great, but I have a hard time relating to it emotionally.  Most of the comments centered around my lack of emotion, which I predicted.  I'll keep working on it, though. 

The good news is that I earned an A for the semester in my voice studio, which is awesome.  That's what I'm here for.  I hope to continue improving, and look forward to the many juries ahead of me.

In the meantime, I'll see you fools in ND next week.  Prepare yourselves.  And your livers.

Life Update (It's a doozy)...

A few strange things happened this week.

Okay, a lot of strange things...  The strangest of them all, though, are as follows:

• I didn't blog for over a week. Shame on me.
• People still checked out my blog to see if I had written.  Go you!!!

However, those are minor things in comparison to the roller coaster that has been Raissa's life recently.  I'll do my best to sum them up below.

Last week brought a lot of hype with the much-anticipated and yet much-dreaded Holiday Festival.  I had (obviously) never been in the Holiday Festival, but had heard a lot of bad things about it from upperclassmen.  Thinking about it, I mean, what good could possibly come from 300-400 musicians in the same room, at the same time, putting on the same concert 4 times?

I thought that the JC Christmas Concert was a hassle and time-consuming, what with a dress rehearsal filmed by PBS crews and having to do your hair and makeup the same way two days in a row so that they could take cuts from the rehearsal and the live performance.  Ha!  Not even.

The HF involved one 3 1/2-hour rehearsal on Thursday night, which was awful.  Standing for almost the whole time, rehearsing instead of running pieces, people not paying attention, dealing with "Betelehemu..."  It was awful.  We performed on Friday night, which was pretty bad again, but it was nice to sing for a sold-out crowd of 2000.  We performed Saturday afternoon to yet another sold-out crowd.  (Guess who forgot to put their phone on silent and received a phone call during the concert.  If you guess me, you're right.)  They fed us, we drank a little, and had a Saturday evening concert, which was also sold out.  Then, we had a sold-out Sunday afternoon concert. In all, we performed to over 8,000 people. 

It really wasn't as bad as people made it out to be.  There was a great variety of music, what with an orchestra, brass band, percussion piece, monster choir, small choir, and a few soloists.  My riser buddies made life interesting, and there was never a dull moment on the risers.  Sure, it sucked to stand for an hour and a half without moving, but whatever.  That happens.  And we didn't even have to sing well half of the time because of the audience sing-alongs. The audience loves the show and come back year after year.  I love watching crazies in the audience.  It's highly entertaining.

What did suck about it, though, was how gosh darn much of my time it wasted.  I was in the monster choir, composed of like 200 students, so really, I was useless.  No one would have noticed if I wasn't there, and I wasn't really necessary.  Not that I'm saying I want to stand out, but it makes one feel unimportant in a choir of that size.  And I got absolutely no homework done.  At least it was the weekend before the week before finals week instead of the weekend before finals week.

In addition to HF, I had to attend orientation at BR, where I was hired as a shift leader at a new store that is opening in Superior.  This job, even though I haven't actually started yet, has been a run-around ever since the interview, and as soon as I find something better, I will snatch it up.  I had the interview in October and the owner-manager told me that I was a top candidate.  I expected to start working within a few weeks.  A few weeks went by, and I heard nothing, so I emailed and still heard nothing.  I did another job search.

I finally got an email saying they would like to hire me, but that the store where I would be working wasn't even built yet, and that we would be training soon.  Well, here it is, 2 months (almost) after my interview, and we finally started training last weekend.  Saturday morning, I had to be in Longmont (a 20-minute drive) by 8:30 am.  I got there to find that my co-workers are literally all high-schoolers (except one).  F. M. L.  I was talked to as if I was one of them: slow, stupid, and shy.  I'm not any of those things.  Well, slow sometimes.

We did the same thing on Sunday at 8:30 am.  I was told we would be working store hours during this week in the Longmont store, but when I asked her when and gave her my schedule, she said we wouldn't be working because of the weather.  When a schedule was finally made, I was scheduled to work during a time I specifically told her I couldn't work because of final exams starting THIS Saturday.  It's not been fun. 

Monday brought a surprise of its own.  I came home to a very upset roommate.  Her department had randomly decided that hall directors with roommates had to get rid of the roommates.  Presently, there is no rule against it, and they have known that I have been living here since August, but it only became a problem this week.  Why?  I don't know.  If the department had their way, I would be out on the street right now.  I apparently pose a security risk or something.

Surprisingly, I wasn't freaking out about it.  My dear friend Kenny recently broke up with his boyfriend and has been looking for a roommate, so I knew that I had that option.  Christina told me to wait until Thursday (today), so that they could make a definite decision.

I waited.  Today came, and they have decided to write a new policy for hall directors that requires that their roommates be either family members or domestic partners. Because I'm not Christina's domestic partner and because I have no desire to turn lesbian in order to stay in this apartment, I have to move out.  The department wants me out as soon as possible, but Christina said I could stay until after Christmas break.  I'll probably move out at the end of next week.

Kenny is staying in a condo in Broomfield, which is about 10 miles from Boulder.  It's not nearly as convenient for many reasons:

• I'll be commuting to Boulder daily (but we plan on carpooling).
• It's an unfurnished place, so I'll have to buy some furniture (unless anyone has anything they'd be willing to donate and deliver to CO for me).
• It's not nearly as convenient as living on campus because I'll have to get everything done during the day and won't be able to make random trips to the music building or library.
• My house was very centrally located for my friends, and a great meeting point.
• It was nice not to have to drive home after a night of too many teas.
  

However, I do think it will be awesome to live with Kenny.

• He's from SD, and we get along splendidly.  We already know where each other is every minute of every day, so this won't be weird at all.
• Rent will be about the same.
• I get to park right by my building instead of a 10-minute walk away.
• Broomfield is closer to work (if I keep my job at BR).

It's been pretty stressful, what with finals next week (starting Saturday) and random tests and recitations this week.  But there is never a dull moment in CO.  I hope to continue to update all of you more regularly this week, because there are some exciting things ahead!!!

Thanks for reading during my hiatus!

Are you sure it's not Finals Week?

Sometime during my first four years of college, I noticed a trend.  It seemed to me that all professors choose to give the first test of the year during the same week.

The trend continues.

• Monday: Quiz, 2 Papers due
• Wednesday: Quiz, Test, Quiz
• Thursday: Quiz, Quiz
• Friday: Quiz

Yuck.  I think that this trend needs to be examined more carefully. 

At JC, if someone had 3 finals scheduled for the same day, they were only required to take 2 and could postpone the other.  I wish that was true of my life right now.

Yet here I am, writing a blog...