Transitions Update- Family

This is my final update as the semester comes to a close, so I thought it appropriate to talk about who has helped me make it through the semester. My family. I love how my family never ceases to come through for me. All of those times that I forgot to bring my paper and my mom takes the time to find and email it to me last minute. All of those times that I forget something at home and my dad takes the time out of his day to bring it to me. And my sister, who is nice enough to drive me everywhere. My younger siblings who always make my day better.

I have come to appreciate the time I get to spend with them more. In high school, homeschooling, I saw them every minute of every hour of every day. Now, i'm lucky to see them in the mornings for a little bit, if they are awake, and when I come home for dinner. I am very greatful for a family that loves and cares for me, is always there for me, always eager to help me succeed, and keeps me set straight no matter what I'm going through.

 

This girl, UGH! what would I do without her! I think I can solidly argue that I have the best older sister in the world. She's always there for me, no matter what I need. Always ready to hear about my little "Freshman problems" and help me fix them.  

My awesome parents! Ever-ready to get me out of any scrape that I can't get out of myself. Always loving me and worrying about me.

 My little sister who helps keep me crazy.

 

 

Baby Brother #1, who should seriously be the next Andrea Boccelli, and if not, then Frank Sinatra will do just fine.

 And Baby Brother #2 who's always there to give me hugs and kisses when I'm feeling down. I couldn't decide which picture was cuter, so I'll just let you decide.

  Love these people so much! These guys are my support group, my team. They're always there for me, and I am so so SO grateful for them every day.

 

 

Questions, nice comments, and ideas are great. The whole idea of this blog is to help me better my writing. Any positive feedback is welcome.

FUN

You don't usually find the words work and fun in the same sentence. When you do, it's only in those special cases, like the guy who works at the jumping castle store. Otherwise, work usually gets the bad rep. I'm here to say that, although work may not necessarily be fun a lot of the time, fun is necessary for you to be able to do your absolute best.

 

This is true for sports, academics, music, or any other job. I always think of the Mary Poppins quote "In every job that must be done, there is an element of fun. You find the fun and SNAP! The job's a game!" Although this may not be very practical in most situations, there is some truth to it. Your work is only as fun as you make it. I personally do not find sports fun, except for maybe the occasional soccer game with my family. However, I know many who do and say that their game is not the same without it. They do their best when they are having fun. 

 

From experience, I know that I learn way better when I find something fun in my schoolwork. In middle school, my mom would have me memorize a long bible verse every month. She did the same with poetry in high school. At first, I was very bored with it and struggled to get the verses memorized. I found a solution to this by accident. Everytime I had to sit down and work on my memorization, I would find myself daydreaming and sometimes doodling rather than even looking at the words. I decided to try illustrating the bible verses and sometimes just drawing a picture for every word. Since I am a very visual learner (and love to draw, besides), this helped me memorize them very quickly. When I got to Biology, which has tons of definitions to be memorized, I tried the same strategy and it worked!

 

My chemistry teacher drew on the idea of fun in learning and had us make ice cream and carbonated lemonade in class. I will always remember that certain chemicals can raise and lower boiling and freezing temperatures and that different chemicals solubility rates can be raised and lowered with different temperatures.

 

Here's something funny I found on Pinterest. It's called "gummy bear motivation" :). When you have a long passage in a book to read, you place gummy bears all over it. When you reach a gummy bear, you get to eat it! See you can have fun in learning!

Any musician will tell you that, when music is your passion it is FUN pretty much all of the time! And no, by fun, I don't mean FUN. as in the band, even though they are great :)

True it can be a pain to have to practice all of those hours "some nights" (sorry, I had to :D), but overall, it is SO much fun! Starting off sometimes, though, you need a little motivation. You need to find something to make it fun. When I was little, my teacher was very good at this. He had an analogy about a song I was learning being like a double-stuffed oreo (if any of you remember those). The song had four sections- The beginning, two middle sections that are the same, and the last that is just like the beginning. When I played through the whole song (a monumentous occasion at my level and age) I got an oreo. Once I figured out that playing the song well and fast several times got my mom to give me more oreos, I was off with leaps and bounds. As I got older he would incorporate games ino my practice routine. If I stumbled on a part of the song, we would stop, roll the dice and see how many times I had to repeat that section correctly. This would lead to mastery. Every student's favorite game (besides the oreos), was the ball drop. This game taught us to watch our teacher carefully during performances for timing and synchronization. My teacher would drop the ball and everytime it bounced, we had to pluck the string on our guitars at the exact moment it touched the ground. This sounds simple enough, but once the bounces get shorter and quicker, it get's pretty tough. This game helped alot with our group performances. Every note became perfectly synchronized with each other until we sounded like our goal of one guitar.

 

Now that I'm older, I provide most of the fun and motivation in my playing. Now, just the playing itself has become its own reward (especially if you play fast!). I enjoy practicing and learning new pieces that I really like. That is in and of itself fun for me.

As you can see, work can be fun. you just have to take the time to find it.

 

(Okay, for this blog post, I did the unthinkable. I put in pictures from an unoriginal source. For anyone wanting to cause any trouble, I got these from imgur- gummy bears, and imgfave- FUN. I do not own these photos. I only put them in to serve my purpose. Please do not sue me :) thanks - Mara)

 

Questions, nice comments, and ideas are great. The whole idea of this blog is to help me better my writing. Any positive feedback is welcome.

Here it comes!

Here it comes! The end of the semester! Packed full with nerves and excitement all blended together until you can't tell the difference between the two. Nerves about Juries, and vespers, the upcoming semester, finals and final grades. Excitement for the holidays and perfomances. It's all coming around. By now I have started to feel some relief alongside the tension. Some classes are coming to a close while others are going at full speed. Registration is over and done, I am signed up for every class I needed/wanted. Next week is Thanksgiving and I get a little breath of rest and relief.

 

Looking back, I feel so blessed to have had so many oppotunities come up. I have gotten to perform at Paten Elementary, a friend's art show, another friend's wedding, and am looking at maybe another opportunity to play at a Christmas party next month. I also feel a little overwhelmed at how much I feel I have learned in such a short span of time, particularly about music. If you had given me a sheet of music this past summer and told me to sing it to you then and there, I never would have been able to. If you had played an inerval and told me to name it I probably couldn't have without some struggle. If you had asked me spell out the chords in a scale or write out a simple melody for the progression, I would have looked at you like you were crazy, and I NEVER would have thought I could learn so much on piano so quickly! And it all does seem like it happened so quickly. I still remember going to commencement speeches and fall regisration like it was only last week, and now the semester's about to be over soon.

 

 I'm excited for next semester and what it has in store for me. New friendships, new things to learn, new opportunities. If next semester goes half as well as this one did, I will be very happy :)

Questions, nice comments, and ideas are great. The whole idea of this blog is to help me better my writing. Any positive feedback is welcome.

Mistakes and Learning

Mistakes have played a big part in my learning, both academically and musically. In writing, mistakes and revision are what make for great writing. The more mistakes you find and fix, the better your writing will become. This has been very true of my learning to write. I remember a few particular papers in high school that I wrote, thinking I had done a great job. I turned them in to my mom, and when I got them back, they were marked up with corrections. Only when they were pointed out to me was I able to see how terrrible some of the wording sounded, all of the grammar issues, spelling errors, "messiness" in my ideas, and bad structure. Learning to fix these mistakes has made and continues to make me a better writer. So I  guess you could say that it isn't the mistakes that teach you, but rather learning to fix them. This went over to math too. My mom was a good teacher in that she made me work, and work hard for my grade to ensure that I reall knew my stuff. In math, if I wasn' getting it, she wouldn't just stamp on a bad grade and move on. She would make me do the same or similar exercises over and over again until I got it and it clicked. This frustrated me for a while, but it ultimately led to mastery of the materials. Realizing the mistakes helped reveal my weaknesses so we could pinpoint and refine them until I had it all down. The same went for my music. My teacher would help me pinpoint my weak spots and we would work on them over and over until they were fixed. We wouldn't stop until all of the tranitions were smooth, the duds were gone, and the tone was perfect. As you can see, realizing your mistakes and learning to fix them is very important. Though they may sting for a little while at first, they bring beauty to the finished product and confidence in your own mastery.



Questions, nice comments, and ideas are great. The whole idea of this blog is to help me better my writing. Any positive feedback is welcome.

Focus and Concentration- an Update

Here's an update on my past focus topic. Since that last post, procrastination has still obviously been a problem, but not quite as much. I have been trying to develop this habit of stopping and checking "am i doing what I should really be doing right now?" every few minutes. This is very effective, because most of the time, I'm not doing what I should. This helps me snap back into what I really should be doing.

 Something else that has helped is that my laptop charger cord has gotten loose and only works when it wants to. When it runs out of battery, I have to sit with it for about an hour holding the cord in place, thus making it virtually impossible to type quickly. This really stinks when it comes to schoolwork, but as for everyday use, it has actually helped me stop procrastinating a little.  Since I haven't gotten to take it in to get it fixed, I have been having to share my parent's computer. This means finding a time slot when my parents and younger brothers and sisters aren't using it. It's either that or working in the ASC when I get the chance. This has forced me into the mentality that when I get on the computer, I absolutely HAVE to get to work. 

This has also partially lessened the distraction, since if I want to get on Facebook or Pinterest, I have to wait until my mom is done checking emails, etc. and the kids are done with their schoolwork or games. Since my computer has been down and I have been more focused, I have found more practice time that I had been struggling to make. Overall, this has snowballed into better focus. I still want my computer back, though. :)

Update on my Transition into College

Yesterday, I was walking across campus thinking about how well and how smoothly  my transition has gone from high school to college. For me coming to college hasn't felt like a huge deal. This is thanks to my older sister, who we call "the family guineapig." Since she is the oldest, she always has to experience the huge life milestones before anyone else in the family. She was the first to homeschool through high school and graduate, first to get her driver's license, and then first to go to college. With all these things, I have always had the chance to get used to the idea of things before having to experience them for myself. The same was true for college. She had already started here at TLU last fall, before my senior year, so I kind of knew what to expect. Now, here I am.

 

Thinking about where I probably was at this exact moment last year. I woul probably be sitting in my bed, in my pajamas (don't say "lucky homeschoolers" just yet!), reading my physics chapter trying to make heads or tails of it alone, or writing one of the two 3 page essays I had due every week, plus written homework responses and all of the reading I had to do. Just the usual routine I have had over the past 12 years of my education. Now, here I am going from class to class like it's no big deal.

 

The routine has become fused in my mind already, and like I said earlier, I don't find it wierd anymore. My study habits are improving and declining at the same time. My procrastination levels are still about the same, but I am more focused since I have bigger goals now that I have my mind set on college. My junior year, I loathed the idea of college. I thought, "what is the use of spending tons of money for classes I don't even care about. I want to teach music!" Now, I see it as improving myself to help me improve my future students and the extra classes help make me a well-rounded person academically (TLU has me sold over the "liberal arts education" idea). The better I become, the better I can help them become. This "bigger picture" focus, helps to keep me set to my work.

 

However, now I don't have my mom here to make sure I'm working on my essays instead of on facebook. Responsibility is about the same, although in different ways. In high school, I was responsible for both teaching myself the material, and making sure that I learned it well. This is a HUGE load for any person of any age, and has really matured me. Now, in college, I just have to take notes, and make sure I'm learning enough to pass the tests and (in the case of music classes) make sure I am prepared for my career. In this way, responsibility has even decreased a little. In other life areas, however, I have had more responsibility placed on me. I don't have my mom to make sure I'm where I need to be on time, I am responsible for managing my own money, and as I mentioned earlier am solely responsible for getting my work done.

Questions, nice comments, and ideas are great. The whole idea of this blog is to help me better my writing. Any positive feedback is welcome.

Take Time for the Small Things

Over the past couple of weeks I have seen so many students and teachers so strongly affected by the death of Dr. Hettinger. I did not know her personally, but my sister was in one of her classes and always spoke kindly of her and was also very sad to hear of her passing. I cannot know how they must feel for having lost, from what I hear, such a wonderful, kind person. I can, however, relate in a way to how they come to the realization that they must take a step back and make time for the small things. This past spring break, my older sister got in a terrible car accident. She and my six-year-old sister had been shopping and where on their way home. A man, who had been visiting from Corpus Christi, had been looking at his GPS, swerved out of his lane and rammed into the driver's side of my sister's car.  The car was totaled and completely crushed in on my sister's side, but thank God, neither of them had a single scratch on them! By looking at the car, you would never see how they made it out alive and virtually unharmed when you think of what might have been. My mom and I had been away from home when this happened, and came home finding them alive and well. They told us what happened and the thoughts rushed over me that if it had not been for the grace of God, I would not have two sisters today. I'm literally crying right now just remembering it. This was definitely a shock for my whole family. The next day, not just us, but all of my aunts, uncles and cousins living nearby decided to take the day and just be together. We went to the park and just hung out the whole day, because we had been awakened to the reality that life is just too short to forget about the small things. We got ice cream, we rode the train and got on the paddle boats and just enjoyed being together, because we knew that now. I have never looked at my family the same way ever again. Although I do forget sometimes and yell at my brother, or get angry at my sister sometimes, I always try and just cherish the short time I have here on earth with them. I blow bubbles for my baby cousin, I read a bedtime story and snuggle with my little sister, my brother and I blast our favorite music on my mp3 player (low-tech, I know : P), I paint with my older sister, say I love you to everyone before bed, and always give hugs because I remember that fact. Life is to short to not take the time for the small things.



Questions, nice comments, and ideas are great. The whole idea of this blog is to help me better my writing. Any positive feedback is welcome.