A random thought I felt like sharing:

I was sitting in my Geological Disasters lab the other day and something occurred to me. It’s the first Science class that I’ve taken since Honors Chemistry my junior year of highschool, and I’m enjoying it. I still remember some of the chemistry and physics concepts I picked up at ol FHHS, and I suddenly remembered how much I used to love science.

I started thinking about it, and the year I joined band and started really getting into music was the same year that I had a bad science teacher.  Many of my friends remember taking Honors Biology with Ms. Fischer sophomore year, and she was a bad teacher. She didn’t have good lesson plans, she didn’t really know what she was talking about, she wasn’t engaging, she was inconsistent with the sources of her teaching materials and tests, and overall it wasn’t a fun class. I didn’t feel like I was really learning much, because the teacher was unable to engage me. As someone who thought for years that he was going to teach science.

At the same time, I got involved in something that challenged me, engaged me, required me to learn at a rate that was much more difficult than anything I had encountered in my academic career so far: Band.

As a future educator, these are the kind of things I think about.

Post Script: If for some reason, I didn’t teach band, English would be the next on my list of subjects, and for that I can thank Ms. Kristen Patteson and Mr John Bizal, who taught excellent English classes my freshman and senior years, respectively.

It’s a thursday night, and I’m essentially done with the second week of my second semester of College here at Northern Arizona University.

There’s three big things going on right now:  Academics, Extra Curriculars, and Life outside of all that.

Academically, this will be my easiest semester (probably of my whole degree)

• Studio
• Sight Singing/Dictation with Moore
• Harmony 2 with Dr. Brown
• Class Piano 2
• Symphonic Band
• Collegiate Band
• Geological Disasters

I was unable to get into a techniques class, so I’ll have to double up next spring to catch up. I couldn’t take my education intro class, because it’s the same night as collegiate Band, which I need to play in to keep my scholarship. Geological Disasters will in fact be a cakewalk, and will satisfy my lab science. I intend to do well in Piano (not that I did poorly, I just could’ve improved more as a musician last semester), My harmony class is the same (thank god I got in with Dr. Brown again, he’s amazing), Sight Singing with Moore will have fewer assignments than with Russel, but I drastically need to get better in that area, so I’ll be applying myself.

this is all outside of my tuba playing, which I have a bit more time to dedicate to this semester, and I’m really, really going to try and push myself to improve there. I’ve got my Upper Division jury coming up in a couple of semesters, and I need to start preparing for it now, because my applied theory chops and scales and arpeggios and ear training and my sound and my sight reading and my ensemble playing and my technical playing and my musical playing and my low register and my high register and my breathing all need to get better soon, if I want to get the most of my education here at NAU.

Extra Curriculars:

• NAU CMENC- Our Collegiate branch of the Music Educators National Conference
• NAU Wind and Percussion Advisory Board- a group of students to get together with Dr. Schmidt and talk about what needs to be improved and how to improve things in our program.
• Kappa Kappa Psi- National Honorary Fraternity for Collegiate Band Members
• The Academy Drum and Bugle Corps-
• NAU ITEA- College Chapter of the International Tuba/Euphonium Association

That’s whats on my plate outside of the classroom. I’ll be benefiting from all of these things, and all will require different commitments of time and energy. It’s all good though.

As far as everything else goes: I’m going to attempt to soak up a bit more of college this semester. I don’t know what that means, but I know that I mean it. Maybe it’s just that first semester went by so fast and I don’t remember much of it, but it seems like I didn’t do enough random fun stuff.
I’ve also finally got my recording software/hardware set up, and I’m going to start my first, a small step of a recording project this weekend. After that project is done, I’ll probably dig up my lyrics from all the songs that I played at the concert in August that fell out of my rotation and clean those up, get them recorded for posterity’s sake.

So, I’m going to see if I can pull a balancing act and try and get my personal goals reached in all my areas. Someone once said to “Practice had and party harder”. I think I might give that a try this semester. We’ll see how it goes.

Oh wow, it’s been a while. So many things have been going on in my life in the past few months, with school, with extra curricular stuff, with life, etc etc etc, and writing in the blog just wasn’t a priority for me so it fell into the lapse. As of right now, I intend to keep my writing up with it for this semester, but I can’t seem to make any promises. Now, with the content:

The milestones:

My 19th birthday came and past. My good friends Ian and Val came to visit me in Flagstaff, and kick it for the weekend. I headed home sunday to see the family, and then came back up on monday. There were no big parties, no crazy birthday shenanigans (unless you count some sick pop-punk karaoke at Granny’s Closet), but it was a good birthday.

As I sit right now, it’s sunday night and I’m going to start my second semester of college.First semester was a blast. I wrote a bit here and there about joining Kappa Kappa Psi, the National Honorary Fraternity for Collegiate Bandsmen, and after receiving my invitation to the final initiation ritual, I woke to find this on my door:

I didn’t come from a big family, it was just me, my mom, and my brother eric for the past few years, but now I’ve got about thirty brothers on campus here who I know are there when they need me. I like the organization, I like the principles behind it, I like the people in it, and I like the work they do, so I decided it was something I wanted to be a part of. I spent a several hours today before/after my ensemble audition putting together desk/chair things for the NAU school of music as a service project. In a few weeks is the state days (hosted at NAU this year), where brothers from the ASU and UofA chapters visit and we all get together and hang out etc etc.

As far as the educational area goes: I managed to survive my first college finals week, which was difficult and tiring but worth the effort. I maintained a high enough GPA to keep my Academic and Music scholarships for this semester, and overall I’m happy with how I did. It was a hell of a week: Piano test (piece from memory), Jury (playing a solo and song by ear for all the brass faculty), Psych 101 final, Math 114 final, Sight Singing/Dictation final, String Techniques playing and written final, Harmony 1 written final, and lastly a Symphonic Band playing final.

Finals week was sandwiched in between a the two weekends of auditions for The Academy Drum and Bugle Corps. The first weekend myself and my friend Travis loaded up my car and headed down to the valley for a weekend of running, marching, and playing, in hopes of becoming members of The Academy.

As of right now, I am listed as a Member Alternate (and I’m not 100% sure what that means), but I have high hopes of marching the show this summer. It’s been a great musical experience so far. I really dig the way the rehearsals are run, and I’m really excited for this summer.

During the first Academy audition weekend, Flagstaff had their first big snow of the season:

Over a foot of snow came down during finals week. It made walking around campus quite an adventure, particularly to 7:30 finals on the first day, before they shoveled all the sidewalks.

So, that’s the big events of the past couple of months.  on to the mile markers:

Even though during a normal school week last semester I would only drive one day (out to Coconino High School to tech for their marching band), and maybe on the weekends, I still managed to do a deal of driving. I was home several times over break, and home isn’t just the ~150 miles from flagstaff to fountain hills. When I’m there, I find myself in tempe, gilbert, phoenix, all around the valley for whatever reason it is that brings me to whatever corner of the greater phoenix metropolitan area that I happen to end up in.

I also took a little road trip. At the beginning of the semester I told my friend Marylee “hey, I’ll have to come and visit you some time since you’re not that far away now”. and I couldn’t seem to find any free weekends because of Marching Band and K-Psi and all that jazz, so in november I took a little day trip to visit her:

In Las Vegas. I’ve never been to Vegas before and I hope to make it back again some time this semester.

So, there’s a shot of my car’s odometer rolling over to 60,000 miles. For some ungodly reason I remember when it rolled over to 25,000 miles, just a few months after I got my license,  february of my sophomore year of high school. Since then, my mom has driven the car a bit (maybe a couple thousand miles tops, she had it for a month this summer), but that means I’ve seen around 35,000 miles of pavement in my driving career. Aint that something?

Totally unrelated to anything that’s going on in this post, but a picture I enjoy regardless of context: A Bird.

Well, I’ve got things to do today, a lesson, tuba/euph ensemble rehearsal, and then a KKY meeting at 9:00PM tonight. Ah, the life of a music major. I wouldn’t trade it for anything.

And I’m in the cowden computer lab for some unknown reason.

Windows update(or lack there of) is preventing me from getting on through Clean Access Agent, so I’m limited to the 24 hour computer lab here in my dorm.

Technically it’s thursday now. Ian and Val are coming up on friday and staying through saturday, so I’m really, really, really excited to catch back up with them. Sunday and monday i’ll be back in the valley. I still need to call people and say “hey, i’ll be in town!”, but so it goes.

yeah.

Life continues to be busy. I’ve taken a few cool pictures, and I’ll probably post a pile of pictures and life and stuff on monday.

That’s all for now.

so, here I am, halfway through my first semester of college.

I had two actual mid-terms last week, one for harmony and one for string tech. I think I did fairly well on both of them. I’m still hanging on pretty strong

some time a few weeks ago I rode an NAU Yellow Bike

What exactly is a yellow bike? Some time at the beginning of this year, NAU released a bunch of bikes around campus (i’ve heard somewhere between 50 and 100). They are school property, and are open to use by any of the sutdents. The only catch is that you leave it unlocked when you arrive wherever it is that you’re going. I think it’s a cool system, though with the implementation that they have right now, there’s not enough for them to be a reliable form of transportation.

I’ve gone to two concerts this semester. Jimmy Eat World played at Prochnow Auditorium a few weeks ago, and it was nothing short of amazing. i also picked up Stiletto Formal’s demo, got it signed by the band, and I gave it a listen and enjoyed.

A week and a half later, while I was home for homecoming weekend, Alexisonfire played a show at the Marquee, and they were amazing as usual.

My mom came up a few weekends ago for family weekend.

She marched pre-game with the NAU Lumberjack Band, and it was a good time. She enjoyed the experience, and I enjoyed spending the time with her. The next day, I woke up early and we went to the grand canyon, spent a few hours hiking down (part of the way) and back out. Ate lunch, drove back, dropped me off, and she headed back to the valley. Quality time.

As far as school goes: my classes are good. I’m still not doing so hot in Sight Singing/Dictation, no matter how much time I put into it. It’s just a tad bit frustrating. Lessons are going well, and I’ve been generally finding enough time to practice. I’m improving significantly as a tuba player, and I’m really happy with that. Marching band is still fun, we’re setting our second show now for the BOA festival this weekend.

I’ve been managing to get a little bit of relaxation time here and there (random late-night hangouts with some of the cool kids from my dorm, parties after marching band stuff is over on saturday).

Today marks the 7th anniversary. I’m still angry, but I’ve only been angry this past year. It’ll pass with time, I guess. And if it doesn’t, it doesn’t.

So: that’s some of what’s been going on. I did about two weeks in a row where I woke up before 6AM, and wasn’t getting to bed until after midnight. I’ve managed to stay not-sick, and that’s good. The first part of the semester I was doing quite a bit to get in shape, but that slacked off over the past couple of weeks. I’m getting back on things this week though, so that’s nice.

I’ve been keeping in regular contact with a few people. It’s good. I miss some people dearly though. Such is life, I guess.

My mother and I went at the grand canyon this weekend. It was gorgeous. I recommend it.

Here’s a couple of pictures.