Looking Back on High School

Looking back on high school, I think I had a pretty good experience at St. Mark’s. I think I’ve changed a lot since I was a freshman, hopefully for the better, but I’m not really sure about if it is for the better or worse, I guess time will tell. I really did have a good time and learned a bunch in high school, but now I just want to move on. I really don’t have any regrets either, except that I wished I was more open and a bit more talkative, but besides that, I’m fine with what I did, didn’t do, and accomplished. I’m pretty fortunate I guess, I’ve gotten to travel around the United States to sing in really prestigious choirs, visit colleges and do other really cool stuff. And I got to meet a lot of good people and good friends in high school, so I’m thankful for that. But overall, I just want to get out of Delaware for a little while, it’s just too small I guess, I don’t know. I’m also lucky I’ve been involved with a lot of stuff at school, the chorus, concert choir, and sports. It’s all been really fun and great, and I’ll miss it a lot.

Time for College

I’m so happy to finally go to college! I’m going to Saint Olaf College in Northfield, Minnesota. I’m going to major in Music Education and I might minor in Music Composition down the road. I loved the college when I went to visit twice, and even though it was 1 degree the second time I visited, I still liked it a ton. It’s in a really small town, but almost all of the students there live on campus, and it has some of the best food in the nation! I don’t think I’ll get bored of the area though, it’s only about 40 minutes away from Minneapolis and St. Paul. I’m also super excited to sing in the choirs there. My first year, I’ll sing in the Viking Choir, which is an all freshman male group, but after my freshman year, I’ll get to audition for any other choir there. Hopefully, I’ll make the St. Olaf Choir, their best choir. It’s really, really good, probably one of the best college choirs in the country. Another bonus to that is if I make it they’ll have a tour on the East Coast my sophomore year so all my family and relatives can come see me. I’m also really excited to sing in the Christmas Festival they have there with all of their choirs, orchestras, and bands. It usually gets aired on PBS around Christmas time, so that should be really cool for my family to see me on TV. Overall, I’m elated to go there, and I don’t think there is a better match for me out there!

Senior Recital

Finally school is winding down and AP exams and finals are beginning. I’m not done with everything though. I still have my Senior Recital left. It’s not until May 31^st, but a lot of work still has to go into it. I have to memorize 9 songs for the program, and most of them are over 4 minutes long. Three of them are brand new songs and arias I have to learn and memorize for the recital. I’m already stressing about it because I’m not sure that I’ll be able to do it all. I mean, 9 songs is really a lot to memorize and perform all the way through without resting my voice between the sets of three songs. I’m always super nervous about performing too, but hopefully I’ll be done with that since I’ve been performing on a lot of recitals lately. The one thing I like about it though is that it’ll be done before graduation. So after graduation, I’ll have nothing but free time, which is going to be awesome. I’ll probably end up golfing a lot this summer, since it’ll be my last chance to golf on the courses around here for the next four years, I might even try out for the golf team in college, it all depends on how I do this summer though.

Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon

The purpose of the fight scenes in Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon is not only to make the movie be really awesome and cool, but to show how disciplined and well trained the Wudan are at their art. It is really important for one to be disciplined at the things that they like to do, because if one is not disciplined enough, they will never become a master at what they want to do well. Being well trained is another important thing in life. If it was not important, we wouldn’t have schools and colleges, and the ones with the most training, such as doctors and lawyers, get paid much more money and have more prestige than someone working an entry level job. The same can be said for the movie. The fighters with the most training and discipline almost always come out on top. Another possible purpose of the fight scenes is that the directors wanted to show how emotional and intense the fighters were about their cause. They wanted to show that they would use their discipline and training to fight for what they believed in the most. But, the obvious reason why the fight scenes are in the movie is because they are super cool.

College Stuff

Today I was supposed to hear from the college that is my first choice about their admission decision. But oddly enough, nothing came. I don’t think I forgot to include anything in my file, I am actually really sure I submitted everything I needed in my file. I have checked my e-mail several times, but I still haven’t gotten anything from the school. Nothing came in the mail and no one called my house, so I don’t know what’s happening. Maybe the post office didn’t receive the letter in time or something. The school is in Minnesota, so this is a possibility. I’m not really upset about it, it’s just weird. Hopefully, it got to the post office today but they couldn’t put it in the mail, so they’ll put it in tomorrow’s mail. Maybe it might even come on Monday or Tuesday. I was looking forward to getting the letter today, but I was sort of shocked when I got home and nothing was in the mail for me. I even checked the portal a couple of times and nothing was on it. A couple of times, they’ve sent me things but the postmark date was four or five days before I received it. So hopefully, there is just a delay between when they send it and when I receive it. I’m just surprised that I didn’t get it today, but hopefully it’ll be in my mailbox tomorrow.

Golf Season

Golf season started on Wednesday, we had our first tryout for the golf team. It was a terrible day to play golf, it was cold, windy, and wet, but I was still super excited to play. By the time I got to the first tee, I could barely feel my hands because of the wind and cold, and it was hard for me to feel the club when I swung it. I hate playing golf in conditions like this because it makes a difficult game way more difficult. I like to play the most when it’s about seventy degrees and not windy. Days like that won’t come until May or June though. I still enjoy playing golf for school though, it’s pretty cool how golf can be both a team sport and an individual sport, and I think that’s why I like it so much. It looks like our schedule this year is more difficult than it was the past couple years, but I think we’ll be good enough to have a pretty good record and get in the state tournament. Hopefully next week the weather is really nice so none of the other practices are cancelled, and I hope there’s a good day in March when it’s sixty degrees, that would be awesome.

My Trip to Minnesota

In the first week of March, I went out to Minnesota for a college scholarship audition. It's like it's a different country there. Whenever I would hear someone talk, I could barely understand them because their accents were so thick. It was super cold there too.The morning of my audition it was one degree outside, but for some reason, it didn't feel that cold. Another weird thing about it was that I only saw one other redhead when I was there. People were literally staring at my hair when I was walking around the Mall of America, it sort of creeped me out. Anyways, the Mall of America was about two minutes away from my hotel, so my Dad and I decided to go there right after we got to our hotel. It was the biggest place I have ever seen. There were four levels to it and each level was about a mile around. There was also a gigantic amusement park for kids in the middle of the mall. It had about three roller coasters in it too, it was almost too big. It also had an aquarium in the basement. To me, it seemed really stupid that someone would ever build a mall that big, it was almost overwhelming. That being said, the people there were way different from the East Coast, they were all super nice. I liked the college I auditioned at also. I actually really liked it a lot, so hopefully I’ll be in Minnesota for college.

My Outrageuos Vacation

A few years ago, in seventh grade, my family had an Easter break when my grandparents were at their vacation house in Florida. I had only been there when I was a little kid, but now I had the chance to go back. I have a family of five people, and we took my aunt down with us. Our only option to get there was to drive. We decided to get an early start and we left our house at one in the morning. The whole ride took us a whopping twenty- one hours because we had to stop for breakfast, lunch and dinner. I had a really nice time when I was there, I even went golfing with my grandpa a couple of times. Once when we were golfing, I hit my ball into a sand trap next to the green, I walked up o the sand trap, and when I looked in it, there was an alligator sitting next to my ball. I looked to the pond on my left, and I saw a pair of eyes looking at me, it was another gator. Needless to say, I was pretty freaked out, and I wouldn't go near that pond for the rest of the trip. Another day, I was in the screened in pool and I thought I saw something move in the grass next to the door. The same hole that I saw the gators on is right next to the house. I thought nothing of it at first, but I looked over again and I saw four eyes in the grass staring at me, I knew they were gators, but then I saw the stand up and walk towards the door of the screened in pool. I got really scared because I knew that they could easily get through the screens. I just went inside and tried to forget about it. That wasn't even the worst part about the trip. We left their house at six in the morning and the traffic was fine until we hit Georgia. Through the whole state of Georgia, we had bumper to bumper traffic. It was an absolute nightmare. Eventually, we got out of the traffic, but that didn't end our woes. When we were in North Carolina, the check engine light on our rental car turned on. My dad had to stop for a while to make sure that there wasn't anything really wrong with the engine, so that held us back even more. By the time we got home, we had spent a total of twenty three hours driving and stopping for meals. We got back at four in the morning the next day, it was absolutely ridiculous. After that experience, I will most likely never, ever go back to grandparent's house in Florida.

Waiting for College Accpetances

The only thing I dislike about wanting to be a music major in college is having to wait so much longer than everyone else for acceptances. My brother has already received all of the acceptances into his colleges. I, on the other hand, have to wait until many weeks after I audition, and I have to be academically accepted too, not just accepted into the music department. I have 2 more auditions that I have to go to, and then after that, I might have to re- audition for a scholarship, prolonging the acceptance letter even longer. I am more worried about getting in academically than I am about the musical part of it. I just wish I could get some acceptance letters. After I hopefully get my acceptance letters, I’ll have to worry about the financial part of it. All this stress from college seems to be unnecessary, but it is even worse that it is just extra stress, and I still have to worry about school and other things. I know I have to keep my grades up to have a chance at getting into some of the schools that I applied too, and right now, I’m having difficulties keeping them up. I don’t even know if I should even worry about all of it though, soon enough the college process will be over. I think that sometimes people can overestimate the importance of college, Bill Gates dropped out of college and he’s a billionaire. But sometimes, college is good because it can help someone find out what they want to do for a career, it can give them the guidance that they need to succeed. Overall, the college process is super stressful for me, and I guess that I have mixed feelings about college itself too.

Death and Dying Class

Death and Dying class is one of the most confusing, difficult, and depressing classes that I have ever taken, but somehow, I sort of like it. There are an abundance of quizzes, tests and lectures. I don’t really like the lecture style class though, I tend to prefer classes that are more of a discussion. On all of the quizzes the questions are really specific, if I were a teacher, I would not ever ask anything so specific. But that is what makes it so interesting, we go so in depth about everything we do. We just had a quiz on Tuesdays with Morrie, which was a very good book. There was something very different about the structure of the book though, the author, Mitch Albom, had meetings with Morrie every Tuesday, and he wrote down everything that was said during that meeting. It sort of reminds me of something a newspaper would do, which is quite fitting because Mitch Albom was a journalist. The story is very heartwarming and inspirational. It is about a man named Morrie who was a professor at Brandeis University, where the author went. The reader eventually finds out that Morrie has ALS or Lou Gehrig’s disease. This is when one loses total control of their muscles over a long period of time. Morrie is old, but he is full of wisdom. He is a very positive person. He doesn’t think about death negatively, he thinks that it is just the next step. There are so many great life lessons for people of any age in this book, and Morrie is always optimistic with his points of view. There is more to the story than the meetings and lessons. Mitch ultimately finds who he actually is again after the meetings with Morrie. Before that, his life was ruled by money. Tuesdays with Morrie is not only a story with multiple life lessons in it, but it is also a book about transformation. It most definitely one of the best books I have read.     

College Auditions

I can't believe that it is already January, the fall went way too fast, and I assume that the rest of the school year will go by even faster. So far, I have applied to four colleges and I have already auditioned at one. It was a couple weeks ago, but it was super stressful. It was at Westminster Choir College, and it was at eight in the morning on a really cold day. I had to get up at five and leave at six so I could get there in time. When I got there I was really tired and I didn't really feel like singing, but I had to. I waited in the waiting room for a while until they called me to warm up. After that, I had to walk to my audition room and get ready to sing. They eventually called me into my audition room. It was a really small room that was dimly lit. It had a baby grand piano in the corner. There were three judges, who were all on the voice faculty there, and there was also a pianist. Initially, I was sort of shocked that the room was so small and dark, I had expected it to be somewhat big and brightly lit, like most music rooms, so the room sort of threw me off of my game. The judges then asked me to only sing one song out of the two that I had selected, and that was another thing that surprised me. I chose my most difficult song, but I was afraid that my voice might crack on a high note since it was so early in the morning. I went through the song and at the point that I thought my voice would crack, it did. I was super shocked because that had never happened to me before, and I didn’t really sing the song as well as I could have. I was super stressed out the next couple days because I thought that they wouldn’t accept me. A couple of weeks after the audition, a big letter came in the mail from them, and it was an acceptance letter, they also gave me a sixteen- thousand dollar scholarship! This auditioning stuff really stresses me out, but it usually turns out fine. Unfortunately, I have to do it all again tomorrow at the University of Delaware. Hopefully this one will be less stressful than my first!