Almost There...

You know it's the end of the semester and you're exhausted when:

~You have to bribe yourself to get out of bed by promising yourself a nap at lunch time.
~You plan your days around cramming in the most practicing and paper writing possible.
~You make fun of those who had spring break because they still have over a month of school left.
~Making fun of people with spring break no longer helps, you just want to be done.
~You are counting down the number of days left in any given class.
~Your professors start sending out "you can do it" or "just hold on" or "I believe in you" e-mails to try and motivate your class.
~Your professor spends an entire lecture making fun of the way Americans speak because he doesn't want to be in class either. He supplements this form of amusement with dancing to the music being studied and telling random stories.
~You start wishing your classes were pass-fail.
~You begin contemplating the viability of getting all your food and nutrients through an IV to save time.
~The highlight of a week was dropping all of your spring term classes, and now your contemplating getting the same level of joy from dropping your summer classes.
~Even after 8 hours of sleep in a night you need two or three naps to function.

The makings of a good week...

Yes, I know, it's not even Friday yet, but this week has been pretty good.

1. No all-nighters, as opposed to last week where I pulled two and wanted to die.

2. I'm running regularly now since the weather has decided to play nice. I feel sooooo much better when I run, but I'm too much of a baby to run in the cold. So if it is cold you can count me out.

3. The favorite little brother opened his mission call. The lucky stinker is going to Manchester England... speaking Mandarin?! I'm really, really, really jealous of the location, the language not so much. It was a little weird to watch him open his call, because I realized that I will be the one opening a mission call in just a few short months. Wow.

4. I went to Evening of Concertos with Tia thanks to getting two free tickets from Danielle. The concertos were awesome, and I loved listening to all of them, however my favorite by far was the Barber Piano Concerto. Love, love, love, love, love. And Jackie never disappoints, she's a fantastic performer.

5. We had scale day in masterclass. The completion of scale day would make any flute major happy. Ode to Taffanel Gaubert #4, how do I love thee...

6. I finally figured out my summer. I received an ORCA grant from BYU this year to go study Chinese flutes up at the Tianjin Conservatory (semi near Beijing). I'd been struggling with when to go, but after talking to my faculty mentor I decided to go at the same time that he does. So I'll be spending two and a half weeks in May running around Tianjin and playing bamboo flutes. If you weren't jealous before, feel free to be jealous now. I am so incredibly excited. Aaaand as the double dose of icing on the cake, I got to drop my spring term classes (excited, moi?) and I'll get to spend some time with my family and my brother before he goes into the MTC. Yep, I'm excited. Can we just fast forward to May now? Pretty please?


I'm gonna get to play flutes like this!!! *cue manic grinning*

Why I love the HFAC

Today I overheard this conversation:

Music Nerd 1: What is that obnoxious buzzing noise? (referring to the gosh awful noise emanating from something near the ticket office)
Music Nerd 2: I believe it is an "E".


Oh how I love this place...

How you are *supposed* to write papers...

Yes, it is five am. Yes, I'm about to go to bed. Yes, I have to be on campus at 7:30. Yes, I have been up all night. No, it wasn't fun.

I had a brilliant idea for a paper for my English class. To save time, sort of, I decided to write our paper that is due today on a topic I thought I already knew. I'd done a project on it in high school, and read a little here and there on it since then, so I figured I was more than qualified. I'd write the paper, and then find a hand full of sources, prove myself right, and voila, the easiest paper of my life.

Next time I'm finding all primary peer reviewed sources and writing on the mating calls of the extinct dodo bird because that will be waaaaaaaaay faster. Yeesh. Trying to prove yourself right is just too much work... Hence why it is 5am.

long time... no post...

With the completion of my recital I decided to drop off the face of the earth. It was highly enjoyable, there was much chocolate and Disney princess movie watching. Sadly, all good things must eventually come to an end and with the arrival of midterms I'm back to school. Honestly, I'm not sure the break did quite what it was supposed to as now that I'm back about every few days I've begun contemplating dropping out of school to watch Disney full time... just kidding... but it's a little tempting.

The recital went well for those of you who were curious. Tons of family came into town which was really cool and fun to see everyone. I felt a little bad because I was incredibly stressed before and then really exhausted after so I'm not sure quite how much fun I was. Alas.

Other points of interest... I cut off my hair. Now it's up by my shoulders with the shortest layers being up by my nose. Words cannot describe how excited I am. I used to looooooooooooooove having long hair, but then I came to college, discovered I don't like getting ready in the mornings (as if I got ready in high school...), and then promptly discovered that when my hair is really short I can get ready just as fast as any boy (well, almost as fast as any boy). True story. Long hair prep time = wash hair+towel dry hair+comb hair+debate about leaving it down or up+fixing hair = up to 10 minutes on week days, and up to 30 minutes for church. Short hair prep time = wash hair+towel dry hair+run fingers through hair while dashing out the door = 3 minutes regardless of the day.

The hair cut was a stress management technique. Flute related stress doesn't bother me, I'm pretty used to it and cope pretty well. School related stress, not so much my thing. School related stress results in me doing stupid/random/not-quite-fully-thought-through-things. Things like burning a book with Tia sometime between midnight and one in the morning. Would you believe the smoke from a burning book hurts way more than camp fire smoke? Maybe it was just because it was the middle of the night, but I think it does hurt more...

And before I head out, I'm going to Reno this weekend!!! Woo hoo! Well, it's not as cool as it sounds, Wind Symphony is going on tour. We're playing for CBDNA (College Band Directors National Association)and we're one of the final groups playing, so either they think we're really good or they're hoping everyone will be headed home before we play. Take your pick. Speaking of Wind Symphony, usually I have very few good things to say about anything band related, but our final concert will be amazing. You should come. We're playing Maslanka's 7th symphony for wind band, and it's so cool. And we're being broadcasted live (was that a word?). So not being able to get to Provo is no excuse. Be there, or forever regret missing this one.

Well... I'm all blogged out... see you, like, in another month...