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!