So I realize that I have been posting hardly anything about what's been going on here. Each day feels so long, in a good way, that I find it hard to sort out all the happenings.
To the left is my RM group (Resident Mentor). That's Cortney on the left in the yellow. We are pretty much
all music people. There is one guy missing, about two days after we got here, he got in a bike (the kind with pedals) accident and had to go to the hospital because he bro
ke BOTH of his arms. He's back now, and his advisor registered him for classes, so he's not behind already, but man...rough start to college, no?
Classes started yesterday. I went to music theory, my seminar on conspiracy theories, and then Dat Dah Dah Daaaaaah! I got into jazz history and styles, so I went to that. I also had callbacks for the chamber singers choir, and heard Greg Mortenson speak. Music theory with Dr. Heller is going to be great. I am SOOO thankful that I have studied theory before. A couple people in the class are already confused, and we just went over major and minor scales. I especially feel bad for those who only know how to read one clef. We are going to be working with treble, bass, tenor, and alto clef, so they have a lot to learn. Dr. Heller is o
ne of those teachers who puts up a tough facade, but is laughing at us on the inside for being scared of him. He's going to be a lot of fun. Speaking of fun... the seminar on conspiracy theories. We are to call the professor Jarrod, we have a "peer tutor" who insists that we say his name (Cesar) with the correct accents or he will "think less of us," and the class is one of the weirdest conglomerations of people you could imagine. Jarrod explained that the class is really there to teach us how to be good college students, not to teach us about conspiracy theories. The subject is just a tool to ease us into academia.
Jazz History and Styles I think will be my favorite class though. I am pretty much the only freshman, except for one who is still on the waitlist. Yesterday we talked about coming up with definitions for music, melody, harmony, rhythm, form, and color. We had about a 20 minute philosophical discussion on "what is music?" Some of the questions were, "is a bird making music, or just sound?" "What is the difference between music and sound?" "Can music really not have any purpose behind it (there is actually a whole genre of music that doesn't)?" and "How can we define music without excluding
things that we just don't like?" We decided that it is a human manipulation of sound with intent. Melody is horizontal manipulation of sound, harmony is vertical manipulation, rhythm is temporal manipulation, form is structure, and we actually ran out of time for color, but in essence is it things like timbre, texture, instrumentation, quality of sound, etc. We will be talking about jazz music and it's social and political contexts. It's going to be interesting, because a lot of the class are not "music people." The class is on the common curriculum, so lots of different people take it.
Today I only have one class: Country and Western Dance. My fridays are pretty tough, I tell ya. Ruth had to go to the health services office this morning (yes mom, I went with her) because she has had problems with her shoulder for a few days now. They proscribed a heating pad, ibuprofen, and a deep tissue massage (doctor's orders). I've also got the interview for the job as Dr. Bigler's assistant this morning before my class.
Hearing Greg Mortenson speak was great. He is still really nervo
us in front of large crowds, so it was pretty informal. He showed us a video on the program Pennies for Peace.... the spokeskid is his daughter, Amira, who is 11 or 12 now. If you haven't read the book, I highly recommend it. He said that he's writing another that will probably come out next october (2009). One of the audience questions was "Sen. Biden just propsed $(enter large sum of money here) in foreign aid to Pakistan, what do you think it should be used for?" He proceeded to go on a 20 minute speech about exactly how important education is in the area. I can tell that he is VERY passionate about the subject. Some of my favorite things: "Educate a
boy and you educate an individual, educate a girl and you educate a community," in the past 8 years, the number of children in schools has exploded, though it's still not nearly high enough, and he also went into why the Taliban targets schools, particularly girls' schools.
On a completely different subject, the other day we as a freshman class completed the tower climb. This picture is from the top. Normally the view is MUCH better, but it had j
ust rained, and it was still really cloudy:
And, my requisite flower pictures:
By the by, money spent on books: $518.03
money spent on food: avg. $15/day
getting to stay up HOWEVER LATE I WANT = priceless (the bill will come in the morning)
It would help me if you who read this would ask questions. That way I won't bore you, either with too much or too little information.
music: "You and I" Michael Buble & "Summer's End" Foo Fighters
"One friend in a lifetime is much, two are many, three are hardly possible. Friendship needs a certain parallelism of life, a community of thought, a rivalry of aim."
