sight-singing is the bane of my existence

Although Honors Seminar is starting to work its way back up to that standing. In class today we watched a video about an "artist" who likes to build spirals out of ice and watch them melt, and will slear when his rock piles pall over. No offonse to those of you who might like this sort of natural art, but I don't see sending a chain of leaves down a river as being especially worthy of the title.

That's enough about that. Now for my title. I don't really want to go into detail. suffice it to say that the entire class did poorly today and Krause was definitely not happy with us. He assumes that none of us prepared at all. I did go through some of it last night, but that doesn't mean I'm going to be perfect at 9:00 in the morning. Oh, and he says we should get up early on sight-singing days and exercise before class so that our bodies will be ready to sing. Um, does he realize hoe early that would necessitate my getting up? Far earlier than I can deal with, at least without falling asleep in my other classes. Unless I start going to bed earlier, but that would not allow time for getting my homework done, besides which, it is impossible to go to sleep before midnight in a dorm--there's just too much noise and activity. Anyway, that's enough ranting--I think I've gotten it out of my system.

In happier news, yesterday was my departmental recital for the semester. It actually went really well, though I was rather nervous. But nobody noticed the measure I screwed up, so that's good. And my dynamics were as good as they've ever been, and I had more vibrato than even in practice. All in all, I'd say it was a success. I'm reading a book right now called "The Heart of the Artist" and it's teaching me quite a bit about serving God with my artistic talents. One of the last chapters was on battling perfectionism, and it was something I needed to hear. I'm never satisfied with my own work. Even if someone else says it's great, I'll be focused on the one little thing that went wrong and decide the whole thing was a failure. That's not a good thing to do. So I'm going to be taking the book to heart and go with the idea that it was a good recital overall and not focus on my one little mistake. And I really don't have time to dwell on it anyway, what with the musical starting soon and juries at in May, not to mention everything going on that's not music related.

Oh, and before I forget, happy spring! Whether it was yesterday or today, South Dakota still welcomed spring with about 4 inches of fresh new snow. I can't wait for spring break--I'll go home and build a snowman! Oh, wait. Brookings didn't get the snow that Sioux Falls did, maybe I'll have to build the snowman before I go.

Anyway, that's probably enough of a study break. I must return to analyzing Mary Wollstonecraft.

-Kim