Doin' the Best I Can

Well, Friends, it's been a few days. I'm sure my nonsense was sorely missed and that you were all glued to your desk chairs, losing sleep and constantly refreshing to see if I had posted anything new. I've been in the midst of a school crisis until just about an hour ago. Now that it is solved and I can resume life as normal, I figured you all deserve an update.

Be forewarned that this post will have very little to do with the City of Memphis, and more to do with school.

Classes officially started today for me. I finished registering this afternoon, after scrambling around on the phone with my mom and Texas Tech, trying to get my immunization records sent. I thought this had already been done, but apparently not. So, my mother, being the awesome faxer-woman that she is, took care of faxing the form in for me and within 2 hours all my registration holds were lifted. And, in combination with a meeting with Dr. K (the head musicology dude here) in which I gained permits to register for closed classes, my schedule got sorted.

This morning I "woke up" at ten-till-six. I use quotes there because I never really went to sleep. I just laid there in bed for 7 hours trying to sleep. After a summer of nothing working out quite like it was supposed to, I was fearing the worst for registration. At that point, I didn't really think it would be possible to clear the holds before the registration deadline on Thursday. Then my loan money wouldn't have covered the 2 classes I was able to register for before that, and I would have essentially been a semester behind already. All I kept thinking to myself was - "How can you sleep? You need to solve this STAT."

(I was also kind of disturbed from a documentary I had watched earlier that evening called "The Cove." It is an excellent film, I'm looking forward to the follow-up series "Blood Dolphins" starting on Animal Planet this week...but it was pretty graphic and horrifying. Link Here. As someone who barely stays on the rational side of the fence when watching "Whale Wars," and as someone who regularly considers dropping everything and volunteering with the Sea Shepherds...I spent a good hour sobbing on and off and still haven't been able to get that film off my mind. You really must see it. Everyone needs to see it. ANYWAY...that is neither here nor there.)

So, I heaved myself out of my bed, which wasn't as hard as it should have been because my new sheets are really scratchy and have significantly shortened the time that I want to be there, and took my time getting ready. Despite spending almost an hour on my hair, having a full shower, eating breakfast, drinking an excessive amount of coffee, and watching TV, I still got to campus 40 minutes early. This won me an excellent parking spot, but I felt like the dorky n00b who gets to school 40 minutes early.

So I sat in my car and tweeted constantly...and texted my mom and stuff. Then, I attended the first 8 AM class I have had since my undergraduate degree. Theory. Theory, theory theory. The bane of my existence...I hate music theory with every ounce of passion in my bones. I have a tremendous respect for people who are good at it and who enjoy it, but I am not one of those people, and I don't reckon I ever will be. This is the third time in my life I have been required to take a Theory Review because my entrance exam was failsauce. What gets me is, I really just need to start over and go back and do freshman theory and the whole theory sequence over again. Know why? Because my entire undergrad degree was a joke. Not that the faculty and courses weren't good, but I didn't take them as seriously as I needed to. So, as a result, I retained squat...and it is coming back to bite me.

The theory class is going to kick my butt really hard. But, third time's a charm?

My second class was Renaissance Music, my first music history course at this new school. The professor, Dr. K, specializes specifically (and obsessively) in Renaissance stuffs, and was very gleeful and exuberant as he was teaching it to us. He has been so helpful to me outside of class already, with registration, that I have really high expectations for the course content. He's a pretty funny dude, too. He keeps control of the class while keeping us all chuckling frequently. It seems like his philosophy is that we enjoy it enough to want to learn more and share it with others.

He said to us today, while talking about time periods (and while I'm not sure I agree, it was pretty funny):

"If Machaut is like gin and tonic tastes,
and Palestrina is like a chocolate milk shake tastes,
then DuFay is like at least Yoo-Hoo."

The longer I think about this, the more it makes me wonder how one gets from gin and tonic to chocolate dairy...but it was still funny.

Anyway, the class seems like it'll be structured more score-driven than I'm used to. I'm kind of excited because I need more of that because I'm not comfortable with it...and if I'm going to be a grown up musicologist someday, I need to be able to use that more readily.

Lastly was Aural Theory lab. I'm not getting credit for it, and it's optional, but as Aural Theory is a component of my Theory class, and I have discovered that I need more help there than I thought, I'm going to it. Apparently, I can learn tunes by ear, and know which fingers go down to make which sound...but when it comes to any kind of interval identification or dictation writing, I can't do it anymore.

So. This is a bad, bad thing. And I've got to fix it. So...this semester is about the re-catch-up.

Tomorrow I have 2 classes: American Folk and Popular Music, and Blues History. I'll also be going on an adventure to find the ID office and the parking pass people.

And that's probably more than you ever wanted to know about my school day. My mom is visiting this weekend for Labor Day, and we're going to the Memphis Music and Heritage Festival. My new ethnomus professor is performing. He won a Grammy in 2003 and is part of Last Chance Jug Band and he also plays old-time blues as a solo project. See here.