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.

Confidence in Talking to Myself

In Virgil's Aenid, he writes "Possunt quia posse videntur" or "they can because they think they can" (17). This is very true in any type of performance situation, whether sports, your job, school or in my case music. In this past week, God has blessed me with three performance opportunities. As a performance major, this is a BIG deal, since this is all great work experience and music resume material. 

I was invited last minute this past Saturday to play at an old friend's (who had been in the same guitar studio when I started taking lessons) wedding. Since we had just talked about this blog post in class the day before I was invited, this was a great opportunity to see my confidence- or lack of it- in action. I took careful note of what kept going through my head as I prepared. When I was first asked to play at his wedding, my first immediate mental reaction was"No! I can't do that! There's no way I can have those songs performance ready in one school day!" I had failed at the very beginning. However, I remembered that we had also been talking about goals in Comp class to prepare for the "Write to Serve" project. One of my goals had been to take advantage of every performance opportunity that came my way. This snapped my mind into "Yes man" mode and I agreed to the performance. Over the course of the next day again and again my mind kept freaking out. How was I going to do this? I didn't want to ruin my friend's wedding! The one thing I had to keep repeating to myself was that I had performed the main piece for all of my scholarship performances last spring. I had to keep telling myself "If I could do it then, I can do it now!" 

Also, a few weeks back, I had been invited by the music teacher at Paten Elementary to play for her fourth and fifth graders this past Thursday  With the wedding performance, I had completely forgotten about it until my mom reminded me a few days before. This time, I was prepared. Yes, I did struggle some at first when I saw that I didn't have much time to prepare, but I was able to bring it all under control by remembering how much of a success that the wedding had been. That got me through, and this performance was a success as well.

Finally, this past Friday evening, another friend called and told me that because of the cold weather we have been having lately, she had to drop the band that she had hired and find someone who could play indoors that night. With the success of the past two performances behind me, I had the confidence that I could do it, and said no without any hesitation other than some minor details about repertoire length, but that was soon sorted out. That performance was a success as well. Thus, I know very well first-hand how much of a difference confidence can make in a performance situation. 

Work Cited
Nettleship, Henry, et. al. "Liber Quintus." Trans. Henry Nettleship. Virgil's Aeneid. 
     London: George Bell and Sons, 1898. 1-59. Print. 

(Originally wrote this last week, but forgot to publish it. Found it today and decided to revise :D)




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.

The Goals Make the Game!

Goals are a very important thing in the world of sports. If a team goes out onto the playing field without any plan of action and just decides to "wing it", the odds are that they will most likely lose. I don't watch sports very often, so just bear with me if I say something wrong. The purpose in their playing will become muddled as they go for the win and by the end of the game, the whole team will just be one big wreck. The players will scatter across the playing field and run around hoping for the best. In  a hopeless game of "hot potato", the ball will be passed from player to player and finally end up into the wrong hands. Or, the ball won't be passed to the right person, and that person will get tackled because his teammates didn't know what was going on and weren't there to watch his back. Because of this, the team will lose badly. Basically, the lack of an aim or purpose in their game led to a big loss in the end. 

This idea of having goals set in mind also applies to writing. Before writing, a writer- whether published author or college student - needs to sit down and set his or her goals for writing into place. They need to decide what they will be writing, how they will do it, and who they will be writing for. Without these few goal marks set in place, this their writing purpose would be unclear, their thoughts scattered, their writing unorganized, and their paper hard to read overall. With the goals put into place before writing, your paper will clearly state its purpose, it will be very well written, and clearly understood by the audience it is intended for. Just like in a football game, where the coach has the perfect game plan. The players will be in the right place at the right time, the ball will be passed to the right people, and it will all end in a touchdown! Clearly, purpose and goals make the difference. 

Lately, I have been trying to apply this idea of setting goals into my own life. I have set goals in the past, but over time, they have become muddled and needed some "resetting." Where do I want to be a year from now? 5 years? 10 or 20? In the next few years, I am hoping to be a Certified Suzuki guitar teacher, with a well-established studio. These are all things I am beginning to work out as I set out in this new chapter of life in college. I know that setting these now as I am looking ahead at my next four years in college, will help make the bumpy road ahead of me at least a little bit smoother. Or, at least give me something to hold onto while i'm out there. In the end, I'm hoping to reach that finish line, look back, and be able to say that I did my very best and made it through well.






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.