That’s Puzzling…

I’ve always wanted to learn to solve a Rubik’s Cube. Many years ago I figured out how to line up the top row and the second row using nothing but my fingers, but I could never get any farther. Thanks to my wonderful girlfriend, who recently bought me a cube, I finally unlocked its final secrets (with a little help from the algorithm cheat sheet included with the cube). I took about an hour and a half at school today memorizing the two moves that were foreign to me, and spent most of the rest of the day scrambling and solving the cube over and over again. This is my first recorded attempt – usually I can get it solved in about 3:10 or less, so I’m by no means a “speed cuber,” but nevertheless this accomplishment is a momentous occasion for me.

Perhaps more puzzling even than the Rubik’s Cube, though, is what I learned at school today. I was chatting with some music teachers from a local high school today and they were going on about a relatively new practice having something to do with professional skills development or something like that… I don’t exactly remember what it was called. Essentially, the music department had to get together and decide on a unified curriculum and assessment strategy for their freshman students. Next year, they have to do the same for sophomores. Never mind the fact that music is subjective, just as art is, the administration wants documented incremental growth! Never mind the fact that this school has freshmen in it’s best group and seniors in it’s lower groups, all freshmen must learn and be tested on the same information. Never mind that the school is only eight years old and has one of the top 10 choirs in the nation, there still must be a way to measure their improvement. Never mind that if the administrators attended any of the concerts throughout the year, improvement would be obvious! All that nonwithstanding, these department curriculum-forming meetings must take place.

The puzzling thing about this is that it reminds me strongly of the work I do in my secondary methods education class. One of the teachers I talked to said it was “…nothing but busy work. Someone in administration didn’t have enough to do and decided one day that we need more assessment.” I don’t think there’s a better way to describe my education classes this semester. “We love teaching, and we’re pretty good at it, [doesn't national acclaim mean anything anymore?] so just let us teach for crying out loud!”

One step forward, two steps back… :[

The Long Haul

I decided to re-visit this site, and found it was still alive, if only barely breathing.  In my attempts to put off writing a paper, I’m currently in the process of re-vitalizing it.  For starters, most of the links on the music page were no longer in existence, so I’ve pared that down to my original inspiration song for this blog which you can see in the right-hand column as well.  I’m thinking seriously about leaving philosophic thoughts for the poetry section, which I much desire to flush out with new material, and keeping the main site as a sort of journal, sometimes laden with pictures, sometimes not, in order to preserve my personal sanity.

In any case, it’s about time I started walking again.

Barbershizzopping

Singing barbershop is a two-faced friend.  I supremely enjoy singing dominant and secondary-dominant chords, but after an hour of rehearsing barbershop, I don’t want to do anything else!  I find I develop a strange detestation for minor seconds, major sevenths, and any triads with added seconds or fourths (added sixths are only OK on very rare occasions).  This revulsion makes it difficult for me to sing any piece – no, any chord written by eric whitacre [sic] (<–lol!) no matter how my choir director professes the man.  I just can’t appreciate harmonic half steps anymore.  They make me physically ill.

Hopefully I’ll be able to get a recording of our performance at the Rogers House Bed and Breakfast tonight.  If I do,  rest assured it will be shared/distributed like mad.  If not, well, better luck next time.

One of These Days…

The first half of the second chapter of my college story, which was perhaps the most eye-opening four and a half months of my life (at least until the next four and a half months are over), is old news. I continue to be amazed at my uncanny growth in ability in, knowledge of, and passion for music. (Either that or it’s just dumb luck.)

 

It seems that towards the end of every semester I experience an eruption of pent-up worry about grades and final exams which gets worse every time it comes around. It’s usually accompanied by an overwhelming depression and general feelings of inadequacy. Mainly, I worry about whether or not I’ll be able to keep my scholarship for the next semester and be able to continue going to college, then I think there’s no way I can ever surmount the odds stacked against me to pull off a passable gpa to maintain said scholarship, then I berate myself for not having been very focused throughout the entirety of the semester so that these worries wouldn’t arise. Taken together, I’m not a very fun person to be around during finals week. Of course, I know there’s nothing to worry about, and worrying is ridiculous, futile, and a waste of precious emotional energy! As is too often the case, it seems my brain has yet to catch up with my heart.

 

Upon seeing my grades for this past semester, my brain caught up a little bit… this term my grades were, in fact, better than either of my previous two semesters, and I feel again like I could take on the world.

 

I’m so thankful once again for this blatant reminder that my life is in God’s hands. For whatever reason, I am who I am. For whatever reason, He is making me what I am becoming. I can’t see the future — for whatever reason, I think I’m okay with that.

 

One more step, LORD, one more step.

Perception

I used to think a lot about what other people thought of me. Mainly, I just wanted to be liked and listened to, to have the impression that my ideas were important. I suppose this is no more than anyone wants most of the time. But last year my attitude underwent a massive change by degrees – I don’t really care whether or not people like me or whether or not they appreciate my ideas. This doesn’t mean I have stopped being considerate of other people, it means that I have realized at this point in my life that if someone doesn’t like me or my ideas, I don’t have to change myself to please them. In order to be considerate in such circumstances, I try to avoid confrontation, but I’m not going to change my ideals because if I cannot be true to myself, I cannot be true to anyone else, and certainly not to the God who created me.

That being said, I learned today that in the world of professionalism, which I seem to be rapidly approaching, it does not matter what my ideals are. It does not matter why I do things, it does not even matter what I do or say. The only thing that matters in terms of success in today’s society is the way I am perceived by people more powerful than I. In terms of my schooling, this means how I am perceived by the heads of the education department, how I am perceived by the heads of the music department, how I am perceived by the administration at my College. These powerful people decide whether or not to give me a diploma, their official seal of approval, in my field of study. But what is it that determines who’s approval I need to gain? It’s not what you know, it’s who you know, I guess.

I’d like to think I’m not that petty – I don’t need the approval of mankind to be at peace with myself. I’ll be able to sleep at night no matter what anyone says about me. Times like this make me yearn for home, where value is intrinsic. You’re important just because you are, not because you do.

One more step, LORD…

Hell Week

Finals don’t start until next week. My brother, who attends UNL, has dead week before finals week during which professors go out of their way to clear the schedule of annoying things like choir performances, night class meetings, and surprise assignments. Here at Doane we seem not to have similar ideals – in fact it seems quite the opposite in many ways. The music department’s biggest concert of the year is this weekend (Saturday AND Sunday – haha you don’t get to study, kids!); personally I wouldn’t mind so much if it weren’t for the two surprise assignments in my education class this week, the three portfolios I have due sometime next week, and the way I had class from 9am until 6:30pm today.

But I suppose I can manage to stay happy despite these circumstances. I happen to love music, I love the people in the music department, and my portfolios aren’t due until next Thursday. I skipped my 1:00 class today (well, just the first half of it I suppose) and hung out with friends taking pictures in and of the newly fallen snow instead of finalizing my online portfolio (<—-waste of time anyway). I felt so rebellious!

So maybe hell week isn’t really all that hellish. I only have one final exam that I’m exceptionally concerned about and it doesn’t happen until Friday!

Rites and risks

The newest song of the week is up, an old favorite of mine by Damien Rice – it always reminds me of winter for some reason…

I went home this weekend and experienced the first snowfall of the new season. Winter is more beautiful than I remember it in my mind, but I still prefer Autumn. As per tradition, my family piled into a much-too-small car and persevered the trip down to Newton, Kansas, wherein reside the newest additions to our family. Since my grandpa remarried two years ago, we’ve acquired an entire line of relatives – it’s pretty exciting. One of my cousins Erin, has some sort of degree in flute and is working on her masters, so we have fun every year playing duets and hobnobbing about flutes and such.

Another expedition that the weekend expedited was economic. I purchased two new each of shirts and ties and one new camera (hence the picture of Bob the cat: he belongs to the Kansas relatives), spending a whole pile of money in the process!

As far as risks go, all I have concluded from the weekend of dis-connectivity is concisely explained in this music video: Regina Spektor – Fidelity
and this quote by Edward Gibbon: “All that is human must retrograde if it does not advance.”

Synapses and Sufficiency

Irish Lullaby

i heart barbershop

Last weekend was the NMEA Conference in Lincoln. I went to a fantastic session about music in early childhood given by a man named John (who’s last name will probably always escape me) early on Saturday morning, after not sleeping at all the previous night, a plan of action I only recommend to my most hated enemies – not that I have a lot of enemies. Anyway, the thing that was most intriguing to me about John’s presentation was when he started talking about a child’s brain. From before birth until about the age of one or two, the dendrites and axons which form the connections between neurons in the brain grow like a wildfire in summertime Montana. It’s like the brain is trying to take in as much as possible all at once. But as it turns out, the world can be a pretty boring place, so not all of these newfound nerve pathways get used. The ones that do not remain stimulated deteriorate – the brain’s way of housecleaning. John mentioned this in respect to music: if a child’s music pathways aren’t stimulated at a young age, they will begin to die out and cannot be replaced. So a majority of music education actually happens before the child ever gets to school. He likened the deterioration of the nervous connections to muscle atrophy.

Whenever I read C.S. Lewis, I get the impression that the man did nothing but cognate all day long. It seems evident in today’s literature that such thinking has fallen out of practice with modern society.

Thanksgiving break has started for me. In order to prevent my cognitive nervous pathways from deteriorating, I’m going to spend a majority of time just thinking. I’ve got some issues going down in my life right now, and I’ll just have to wait and see how those develop, but before I can take action, I have to know exactly what I believe and why I believe it.

oh, and happy Thanksgiving!

Honors

Last Tuesday (November 13th) was the Doane College student honors recital.

This concert included the fantastic world premiere of a barbershop quartet known as the Boswell Boys, which is shown in the regrettably low-quality video below. (also, the first second or two is cut off… such a shame). As more videos become available, I’ll put them up here… of course we have to perform more before that can happen!

III. The Importance of Butterflies

Imagine, instead that the outside of his cape is a royal blue, and you will be in possession of a better knowledge of how the little prince was in actual appearance.

In the sidebar to the right is a link titled “The Little Prince.” (This is a link to a website containing the FULL TEXT of the book in numerous different languages). The little prince is a book written by French aviator Antoine de Saint-Exupéry while he was in the United States. You can read the Wikipedia article about it here if you really care that much. I found this book for the first time when I was in sixth grade, and since my first reading it has never ceased to amaze me with each subsequent run-through. Written like a children’s book, its message is counter-intuitively adult. Read it as a child, or read it as an adult, it makes no difference. It is a surprisingly short book with easily readable chapters, but by the end of it I feel every time as if I had just finished the undertaking of a great journey of sorts. The book propels the reader into the strata of moral dilemma, bringing into striking contrast the livelihood of a child and that of an adult.

My favorite is chapter 21 (XXI) when the little prince tames the fox. At the end, when the two must part, the little prince is disdainful of the time he spent taming the fox because the fox begins to cry at his departure. What the prince does not at first understand is that because of their friendship, every time the fox looks at the wheat fields, he will be reminded of the golden curls that crown the little prince, and it will be as if they had never parted.

Reading this book put a lot of things into perspective for me at the end of high school. What is really important in life? Consider this quote from chapter four:

When you tell them [grown-ups] that you have made a new friend, they never ask you any questions about essential matters. They never say to you, “What does his voice sound like? What games does he love best? Does he collect butterflies?” Instead, they demand: “How old is he? How many brothers has he? How much does he weigh? How much money does his father make?” Only from these figures do they think they have learned anything about him. . . .

Just so, you might say to them: “The proof that the little prince existed is that he was charming, that he laughed, and that he was looking for a sheep. If anybody wants a sheep, that is a proof that he exists.” And what good would it do to tell them that? They would shrug their shoulders, and treat you like a child. But if you said to them: “The planet he came from is Asteroid B-612,” then they would be convinced, and leave you in peace from their questions.

In my own life, I have found the underlying message of this passage to ring true in all circumstances. Very infrequently are numbers or statistics about a person worth more than a shiny river rock (unless you’re into fantasy football). In focusing so much on the numbers and figures, we completely forget about the person! How many wonderful relationships have I missed out on because I was focused on unimportant things like “He’s good at basketball,” or, “She can match pitch like a pro,” instead of “Despite his imposing height, he’s really a softy at heart,” or, “When she sings, I can almost hear the rustling wings of the angels that have come down from heaven to listen.”

After I read that passage from The Little Prince, every time I met someone new I never asked stupid questions, like: “What’s your name?” “Where are you from?” “When’s your birthday?” “Are you a cat person?” Instead I’ve taken to asking questions along these lines: “Do you like butterflies?” “When was the last time you jumped in a pile of leaves?” “How far do you think I can slide down this hill on this tray I stole from the cafeteria?” “If you had someone to sit with that you didn’t mind being with, and all you did was lay out at night every night and watch the stars, would you ever get tired of it?”

Figures do not make a man. Take the “Adult Dispositional Hope Scale” for example. It has proven again and again to be a more accurate representation of a student’s success in college and future life than G.P.A or any standardized test. My friend Betsy said, “It’s because it doesn’t ask you what you think you’re good at, it asks you who you think you are.”

So it’s rude for me to think of other people in terms of what I think they’re good at. Instead I try to relate to them as one person to another, one real breathing luminous being to another. That’s what Jesus did, right?

-One more step, LORD, one more step. Soon I’ll cross over, soon I’m going home.