Disclaimer: This newsletter contains explicit language and adult situations, and is sent to fifty-ish subscribers with great hair, fresh breath, and winning personalities. The views expressed in this newsletter belong solely to the editor and the writers, who are all completely insane. If you would like to stop receiving this newsletter, email Ian at jesusfish20@hotmail.com because he is still working on his article about procrastination.In this issue:
Cat's Official Week Topic 1) A Really Long Article About College/The Life and Times of a Music Major
Topic 2) A Not-as-Long Article about College/The Life of an Undecided Major
Topic 3) Song Lyric of the Week
Topic 4) Webpage of the Week
Topic 5) Quote of the Week Cat's Official Week:
Let's do Air Guitar Week, just because I think it's ridiculous. Topic 1) A Really Long Article About College/The Life and Times of a Music Major: - By Matt Walega
***Disclaimer: Apart from being lengthy, this factual, first hand account of college life may frighten some younger audiences, offend the more prudish ones, and bore the ones with ADD. Proceed with caution.***
Things are cooking down here in Columbus, both the classes and the 100 degrees plus daily weather forecast. My first week as a CSU cougar first was decidedly hellacious, and I accrued some 40 dollars in parking citation debts . . . I still think I was far enough away from the fire hydrant, though. Anyway, I shall spare you the gory events of the first week and just advise anyone new to college life that you need to just grit your teeth and get through it sometimes. Subsequent weeks, however, as I have just completed my third, were exponentially more gratifying. I even landed a paid position as a soloist for an Episcopal Cathedral here. I am progressing nicely through a new repertoire in my voice lessons, have found that may range extends much lower into bass country, am learning my scales and drills for piano with all deliberate speed, acquainted myself with a flamboyant and diverse faculty, and have begun to experience the joys of time management. For the people who think that having a schedule is limiting, I urge you to try using one. Scheduling study time and practice hours allows me to know exactly when I will have leisure, and lets me finish every task comfortably before the deadline. It's a miracle for the chronic procrastinator (i.e.-myself). But let me tell you, it's not all tea and cakes, pumpkin. Sure, being away from home is nice, but managing your life completely independent of anyone else and taking full responsibility for personal success and failure can be scary. The ground is littered with the bones of students who found the freedom of the college life, and, like the rebellious and arrogant son of Apollo, loosed the reins and sent their lives crashing to the earth in a fiery inferno, scorching the passersby. Once you spend the time at your disposal, it is lost forever. Music majors have a particularly rough adjustment. Many degree programs have you take two years of general study before specializing in the field. Not so for musicians. We start out with concepts of theory, music fundamentals, individual lessons, and piano proficiency (each a separate class) from day one. You cannot cram musical skill, like dates for a history test. You either have the right stuff, or you don't, and the only way to get those chops is to practice daily. So, while it's taken some getting used to, I have plunged headlong into the hectic, disciplined, and all too often racy life of a music major.
I will explain how these seemingly contradictory traits fit together, cherubs. There are so many facets of the psyche of a musician. I will qualify my definition of 'musician' to refer to a student or professional in the art. Please note that this does not include the dime-a-dozen angsty teen garage bands that whimsically descend upon a random, often unwilling parent's house, bang out some off-key chords to accompany their cracking adolescent voices, and evaporate into thin air some weeks later, citing 'artistic differences' as the cause for abandoning the failing fad. Such bastardizations may also include some select pop artists, although representation to actual events and persons is purely coincidental. So, as I said, musicians are a strange breed. Here, music is the religion of the masses. We are serious about the craft, and the many hours spent in solitary practice attest to the fact. Interrupt anybody around here in the middle of a piece and your greeting will be laced with the venom of contempt...it's just understood that practice time is both necessary and sacred. But, like all professionals, music is what we do, not totally who we are, and when the time comes to throw off the shackles of the week, it all comes cascading out into a gyrating mass of debauchery, underage boozing, and wanton carnality. It's like a three day rave. Most people at an arts school are, you guessed it, liberal. There are no taboos here (with the exception of smokers, who are universally despised by the persons whose livelihood depends on respiratory function). Gay, straight, bisexual, they all converge upon the Rankin (the comparatively lush apartment complex reserved for music majors at CSU) to partake in the bacchanalian homage to Dionysus. Whatever you crave, you can find it here, from intellectual debate to free libation to an easy lay with a willing party of whatever persuasion you fancy. But the party ends Sunday night, as musicians return to hearth, home, and instrument, leaving no indication that 300 souls crowded a building whose official fire safety sanction is scantly 150.
I begin my average day with a light walk in the early morning to the student center for some granola and grapefruit juice. I then go to my concepts of fitness class, where we alternate days in the classroom with loathed physical activity to supplement our self-designed fitness regimes. I usually just find a treadmill and do some jogging until class is over, an agonizing 50 minutes later. The run usually dispatches the breakfast I had just eaten, and is actually quite refreshing when followed by a nice cool shower. I then dress for my math class (I think it's funny that I tested out of all of my English courses and into the next highest class above remediation, algebra and trigonometry. *sigh* Oh well. It's insanely easy, and I resigned myself to endure it if for no other reason than to pad my GPA. I pack my things after the enthralling lecture and make my 20 minute commute to the River Center, am impressive new facility in historic downtown Columbus that houses the school of music. Unfortunately, my dear Ford Taurus, Roxanne, has air conditioning that is tepid at best, so this is often the most trying aspect of my day, as the temperature has by this time reached cactus-withering 107 degrees before humidity. So, I reach the parking garage, peel myself out of my car, and dash to my lesson, where my jocund professor acknowledges my vocal progress in every language except English, with exclamations of 'bravo,' 'zer gut,' 'mangifique,' 'excelente,' and a host of others. I endure his gratingly cheerful suggestions on how I can improve, and move on to music appreciation with Professor Golden, whose class I adore. No complaints. He is the director of the opera and is a doctor in organ performance. Wow. I proceed from there to fundamentals, where Dr. Hansen (whom I also admire greatly) expounds on another as yet unexplored chapter of musical notation and theory. I feverishly jot notes, straining my feeble intellect to comprehend. I take a breather for lunch and coffee with my new group of friends, and then hit the practice rooms before ensemble, where Dr. Marcades is sure to redefine my definition of musical prowess with an expectation that will forever elude my grasp. He makes good music, but he doesn't make any friends. We tackle some challenging literature, suffer some overtly expressed critiquing, and are better for it at the end of the day. I slink off into the practice room again, loosing steam before dinner. I trudge back uptown for the student center, where I refuel on the surprisingly varied and delectable food items in the cafeteria. I come home from the day, read over my notes, practice whatever skill I feel is in the most disrepair, and the rest of the day is mine, a fluffy cushion of four hours before I retire at my self imposed midnight bedtime. Lather, rinse, and repeat, changing some of the classes depending on the day of the week.
I have met so many people and learned so much both about music and life in the short time I have been here. So, while this may read like a journal entry or a short biography, I hope it offers some insight as to what the college experience can be if you pull yourself up by the bootstraps and make of it what you want, and maybe it will give you all who still have to trudge along in the compulsory education system something to look forward to. I hope the old chorus veterans at Central are keeping Todd in line, and I want you to know you've not been forgotten. Come audition at CSU in the spring and maybe we'll cross paths again! I'm off to bed though, so take care, lovelies! Topic 2) A Not-as-Long Article about College/The Life of an Undecided Major: - By Me
While Matt's college experience is full of structured education, 8am theory classes, afternoon rehearsals, and scheduled fun, mine is a life marked with spontaneity. Describing a typical day in my life is almost an impossible task, since I wake up at a different time every single day and my classes range from a 9am seminar on Wednesdays to my 6:30pm choir class on Mondays. Oh, but then let's add those advising and Career Center appointments, with me arriving at untouchable places like Clark Howell Hall just to try and figure out the rest of my life with Major Decisions Specialist Amy Oakes.
So here's a random day in the life of Cat: Perhaps I wake up at 10am. (Wow, I get so much more sleep in college than I ever did in high school!) I'll walk a little ways to the dining hall, which probably stopped serving breakfast when my alarm went off. Maybe I'll make a waffle today. Or just grab a doughnut. Whatever. I will then proceed look for someone I know in the dining hall. Since that almost never happens in the morning, I'll just pick out someone sitting alone and make their table a party for two. Wow, I've met some whacked-out people this way! Sheltered girls, ex-cons, kids with okra-obsessions, we've got 'em all. Random people are so much fun.
Once I'm done with my breakfast and enlightening conversation, I might grab a few cracker packages for the road and then take off for my class. Perhaps I'll take the bus, maybe I'll walk. Every day is a new adventure. Always arriving at my class at least fifteen minutes early, I'll read some of the school paper, the Red & Black, maybe piddle with the crossword before whichever prof begins his babble (which I always stay awake for, of course!) And since my classes are so diverse, that lecture could be on anything from the climate zones of the earth to the Duke of Saxe-Meinengen and the rise of the modern theatre director.
After that first class, perhaps I'll go to the Tate Student Center, where there's always a party shakin'. (Study party, that is!) But the Tate Center is still a happenin' place, with at least one street preacher a week and maybe a bake sale or two. Maybe after Tate, I'll go to another dining hall, get whatever random thing they're serving, from Poppy Seed Chicken to Four-cheese Pizza. I might run into some of the girls from my hall and eat with them. Or I'll eat alone. Whatever.
Ok, another class. Maybe at this class I'll realize that the guy who immediately to my right was really a long-last classmate from my high school Spanish class or that the girl three rows behind me was in my fourth-grade class (both are true accounts). After this class, I'll probably have a meeting that I've been looking forward to since the day began. Maybe it's SGA, or even better University Union. And some days I go to seminars on somewhat-interesting topics such as "If UGA's Colors Are Red and Black, Why Are We So White?" or maybe some type of leadership seminar. Like I said before, every day is a new journey.
By night, I might go to one of our many study rooms and do some hard-core reading and/or sleeping. Maybe I'll do some of that homework in my room now that my roommate has moved out and I don't have a new one yet. Just depends.
Ah, there is one constant part of my daily routine, I just noticed. Every night, when I'm about to go to sleep, the girls on my hall will be extremely loud as they flirt with some guys they have over or watch some hilarious movie or something. So then I'll go out in the hall, remind them that quiet hours started a good three hours ago, and realize in about five minutes that I have no effect on them or their disrespect for others.
So, that's college! It's pretty fun, but having a major would be nice, too. Topic 3) Cat's Song Lyric of the Week:
I think we're alone now; I don't seem to see anyone around. I think we're alone now; the beating of our hearts is the only sound.
- "I Think We're Alone Now" by TiffanyTopic 4) Webpage of the Week:
www.redandblack.comTopic 5) Quote of the Week:
"All my life I wanted to be somebody. Now I see that I should have been more specific." - Lily TomlinClosing:
So . . . another month, another Litterbox. I've been kinda busy, with all the drugs, sex, and rock 'n' roll goin' on. Er, I mean studying . . . yes, studying.
Oh, this colored-font deal doesn’t seem to wanna work with my email server anymore. If you really miss the colors, I attached a Word document to help you out.Previous Edition | Next Edition [ Get Involved | Home | Songs | Archives | Quotes | Websites ]
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