10 days left until I leave for Shanghai. How things have changed in the two years since the last time I went overseas.
I had my third riding lesson today. All my lessons so far have been with different instructors. I did go to a cheap riding place for my past two lessons but it was kind of lame because I was in a group lesson with 7 and 4 year olds, walking, trotting, 30cm jumps and there wasn't much instruction going on (NO, JESS, STOP KICKING AND STAND UP WHEN THE HORSE IS PEEING), so today I decided to splurge on an intense private lesson. Which was totally awesome. My instructor was nice enough, and I have almost mastered the rising trot! The first time I trotted properly at my first lesson I was bouncing all over the place and felt like I was about to fall off my horse, but today I finally figured out what a trot is meant to be like. It's meant to be easier, my instructor said, if you play an instrument because you are meant to be keeping in time with the horse's rising and falling rhythms. But jeez, it is a hell of a lot harder than it looks, even with my hands gripping the saddle and the horse on a lunge lead. And it is a huge workout for my calf muscles. My balance is way better now and it's so much fun though. Last lesson next Thursday, and then I'm off to search for English-speaking riding lessons in Paris. I also want to learn cello in Paris if I have money left over.
I accompanied that singer on Wednesday and it was totally shit. I had a few stuff-ups (the singer didn't notice because I am good at covering stuff-ups). It was freaking intimidating even though I wasn't the one auditioning. 6 judges. SIX. And an effing gorgeous concert grand Steinway. My second time on a Steinway. Thank God the singer was totally not taking it seriously. Well, not really even though she claimed to do so. She graduated in 2011 and she is doing a diploma at AIM, but they won't let her do a bachelor's degree because she isn't committed enough apparently. Got a 40 something result for an ATAR. She is the epitome of my worst nightmare and how I could potentially turn out to be, bad enough as that sounds. Everyone was wearing fancy dresses, as in full on recital/exam attire, so thank God I did the accompaniment for someone first otherwise I would show up next Friday at my own audition as the only one wearing jeans. But I'm not taking this audition seriously either, because I'd rather not be doing music at uni.
I think I will go on a working horse riding holiday in Ireland, England or Scotland for my Christmas break, which is from 21-29 December. Ireland probably, as the currency is in Euros so it's easier for me, and also it's cheaper. Or should I go somewhere else in France for a week, or perhaps London? No idea. Actually I think I will go for Ireland after all. Need to think about health insurance because horse riding is pretty dangerous.
Friday, November 29, 2013
Saturday, November 16, 2013
$$$
Oh, I only wish I had tonnes of it. The random crap I need to do to earn some money. I've been selling stuff on eBay like crazy, and I'm actually surprised at how some pieces of junk sell and how other better stuff doesn't. I just want money to buy clothes and shoes at the moment for next year. Gloves, scarves, boots and stuff are on my high priority purchase list at the moment.
I got a job accompanying a girl for her classical voice audition at the con. I've only accompanied singers several times before and it's not like I have been taught proper accompanist skills, so I need to build up the experience which is why I am charging half the price of a regular (professional) accompanist. I have so much respect for music teachers and stuff that accompany now. It is quite a bit harder than it looks, but it's actually so much fun though I don't even like opera music. The girl has 4 pieces for her audition. A little classical Haydn song that is not difficult to sightread, because I'm more used to playing classical music. There's also an aria that isn't too hard either, I have pretty much learnt the aria and the Haydn in like a day. On the other hand, the jazz-swing sort of song is way harder, and the Aaron Copland is kind of difficult too because I'm not used to playing contemporary music with weird key changes and rhythms. The pay is good though because I am doing 2 rehearsals and the actual audition itself, and I actually do enjoy it. Plus, my con audition isn't until December so it would be good to play at someone else's audition and see what it's like.
Also continuing with piano lessons but slowly breaking the news to parents that I won't be here next year. And at the same time I'm looking for more babysitting jobs.
So hopefully that will be enough money to buy myself some stuff for next year.
I'm starting horse riding lessons tomorrow. Should be fun. I need to learn anyhow because I will be horse riding in Germany. I want to learn flute too but it is weird, I think, to have like 4 lessons with a teacher and then leave for a year. So might just start learning that in Germany if there are English speaking teachers. I'm not too sure about flute yet. I really would love to learn cello and oboe and harp. If I could ever say that I can play piano, cello, oboe and harp proficiently, it'd be awesome. It must be so much fun doing an orchestral instrument and playing in ensembles. Not that I regret doing piano, because it's also fun accompanying people.
I got a job accompanying a girl for her classical voice audition at the con. I've only accompanied singers several times before and it's not like I have been taught proper accompanist skills, so I need to build up the experience which is why I am charging half the price of a regular (professional) accompanist. I have so much respect for music teachers and stuff that accompany now. It is quite a bit harder than it looks, but it's actually so much fun though I don't even like opera music. The girl has 4 pieces for her audition. A little classical Haydn song that is not difficult to sightread, because I'm more used to playing classical music. There's also an aria that isn't too hard either, I have pretty much learnt the aria and the Haydn in like a day. On the other hand, the jazz-swing sort of song is way harder, and the Aaron Copland is kind of difficult too because I'm not used to playing contemporary music with weird key changes and rhythms. The pay is good though because I am doing 2 rehearsals and the actual audition itself, and I actually do enjoy it. Plus, my con audition isn't until December so it would be good to play at someone else's audition and see what it's like.
Also continuing with piano lessons but slowly breaking the news to parents that I won't be here next year. And at the same time I'm looking for more babysitting jobs.
So hopefully that will be enough money to buy myself some stuff for next year.
I'm starting horse riding lessons tomorrow. Should be fun. I need to learn anyhow because I will be horse riding in Germany. I want to learn flute too but it is weird, I think, to have like 4 lessons with a teacher and then leave for a year. So might just start learning that in Germany if there are English speaking teachers. I'm not too sure about flute yet. I really would love to learn cello and oboe and harp. If I could ever say that I can play piano, cello, oboe and harp proficiently, it'd be awesome. It must be so much fun doing an orchestral instrument and playing in ensembles. Not that I regret doing piano, because it's also fun accompanying people.
Friday, October 18, 2013
Lameness of life
Well, my mum’s just gone back into the hospital again a couple of days ago, I
think. Don’t know how long this time, I am predicting around a week.
They say something good comes out of every situation, but the only good thing
that comes out of this situation is the fact that I get to live alone in peace
and her husband will be out of the scenario.
I am not looking forward to doing laundry and dishes and
grocery shopping over the next few days (might just buy a pile of frozen meals
to feed myself). Life sucks. I don’t need this during my HSC. I don’t need the
3 hour total bus/train journey to school and back, either. Which is why I was
thinking I might move into a hotel at the city, closer to the train station. A
5 star hotel may be just the right study environment for me. Heck, even food
would be convenient, and laundry too. But obviously, who am I kidding? No 5 star hotel for me. It was too sudden this time. If they gave her some warning beforehand I may have reminded my mum about it. But no, one second she's at the hospital and the next thing she tells me on the phone is that she needs another operation and is staying there.
I'm such a total sad failure. I haven't studied for history yet and it is in 3 days time, with Maths the day after history. I have music tutoring tomorrow at 10am and it will take me 2 hours to get there by bus and train. I will phone my tutor tomorrow morning and just cancel. I don't give a shit anymore. She's kind of annoying anyway. She is so busy as the educational director of a national music company that she always 'forgets' to let me know when she isn't at home or too busy to give me a lesson, and then I show up on her doorstep after an hour of travelling and either she isn't there or she'll be like, 'Sorry just got off the flight from Perth'. I'm still uncomfortable around her, because she is a musical genius and I can't help but accidentally make myself look stupid in front of her. So yeah, I'm not going tomorrow.
I've already got 3 bags of trash on the kitchen floor and the house is a mess, I can barely get to my wardrobe without tripping over. I feel really weird. Technically I'm meant to be feeling depressed at the moment but because I took the concerta, I feel just numb-ish and weird.
Life is pretty miserable. I just feel kind of lost. It sounds ridiculous and it is ridiculous. The HSC isn't the be all end all, that's what they all say. But to me it kind of is. And now that I've given up I have just totally lost it. It scares me that I don't care about it in a way that I used to. I just keep thinking about my gap year and escaping everything and then I'll be thinking normally again by the time I get back to Sydney in 2015. I would leave forever if I could. There's nothing going for me here and I can't stand the fact that I will see people I know for the rest of my life, if that makes sense. I want to start new. Now I think about it, I would so actually move to the UK. It sounds pretty cool and I so wish I could study in London. Sydney annoys the hell out of me with how expensive it is, and I hate how uncultured it is, too. Places like London, good teachers I have noticed charge like $50 for an hour of private music tuition and in Sydney freaking primary school music tutors charge $75.
I'm scared my mum won't let me take a gap year. Because, honest to God I will do something if she doesn't. I have to tell myself that this is my absolute last chance. Even though I am feeling totally out of it, I will try and pull myself through. I'll do what I have always been supposed to do. I'll study history, do my 'best'. How many times have I told myself that? I don't believe it anymore. I never grew up in the right sort of environment to succeed, anyway. Just like my family is screwed up, I'll eventually turn out screwed up too. I sometimes think it isn't fair that I literally have the opposite of a normal 'HSC lifestyle', it isn't fair that I have to fucking spend 3 hours on transport getting to and from school. It isn't fair that I never had a normal family, the classic supportive family with 2 competent parents and siblings and pets and family dinners and chauffeur parents. Maybe I wouldn't be so screwed up now if my parents actually sat down to think before getting married. The type of parents who cared, asked how my day went, had normal conversations with me, actually knew I hadn't done science since year 10, actually read my report, could show up to my graduation and be normal, went on family holidays, had proper jobs, could string together a grammatically correct sentence in English, were capable of give me advice on what courses to choose for Uni and not just say 'quit asking me I don't know anything about Uni courses'. Now I think about it, all the people I know who do well at school actually come home to nice study environments and normal family members. I walk home to a pile of laundry and no one and disgusting frozen meals and broken oven and no lighter to light said broken oven. And my mum won't get an effing dryer even though I offered to pay for it. I feel like one of those 30 something year old men who just live alone each day, talk to no one and don't know what to do with their lives. The scary thing is I'm freaking 17. The irresponsibility of incompetent parents whose brains are too freaking small to make logical decisions before having a child. Well maybe not their fault, after all I was meant to be an 'accident' and aborted anyway. That's weird now I think about it. If my grandmother had convinced my mother not to get an abortion maybe I would've floated around somewhere until I was born to normal capable parents.
But then again, I sound like an idiot as usual because I could be a starving orphan in Africa. Stupid first world problems that shouldn't even be depressing, but they make me miserable anyway and that pisses the hell out of me. I shouldn't even be miserable. What's worse is that I actually miss school. I feel like that's what kept me sane. The same mundane everyday routine. Actually talking to normal people and interacting with people and pretending that there are no issues in life.
I hate it when people make those speeches that talk about thanking parents for 'supporting' their kids during the HSC. Parents? What parents?
Tuesday, October 15, 2013
Escape
I'm so much less stressed now because I've given up on the HSC.
Well, shit. No way am I going to succeed in uni then.
I don't think there is anyone else that understands the extent of my procrastination. I've done a bit of research (I am a researchaholic) and it is exceptionally sad that I have diagnosed myself with a combination of ADHD inattentive/OCPD/perfectionism (if that is a disease). The issue is I fit all of the criteria for all of these things except for some things. I don't lose things often at all, which makes me question whether I have ADHD. People with OCPD tend to not like to spend money on themselves and hoard it for future use, and I'm the opposite. Perfectionism I think may be a musician thing, but I'm not exactly full on 'everything HAS to be neat'. So now I'm just confused.
The thing is, no one believes me when I explain how I procrastinate, so I've stopped trying to explain because it makes me look like an idiot looking for attention. No one believes me when I'm waiting for an exam to start, freaking out and going, 'I haven't memorised my quotes properly yet'. The problem is, 30% of the time I marginally get away with it, 20% of the time I totally get away with it and the rest of the time it backfires on me. I can study two days before an essay, and still get ranked first. I can memorise my quotes 10 minutes before an english exam and it makes me hate myself when I get 18/20 for doing nothing. I almost had a heart attack when I got ranked 2nd in english extension having memorised my quotes the period before during music. My English trials were the perfect example. I remember exactly that I got 9/15, 10/15, 13/15, 13.5/20, 14/20, 18/20. The 13/15 and 18/20 were probably top 5 in the year of 70 girls, and the rest put me in the bottom 15 of the year. That is what I mean. It's hard to explain, but I am the only inconsistent person I know. Most people are totally consistent. They either get crap or good. But my ranking can fluctuate 50 places just in the trial exam.
The problem is I don't study. Today for paper 2, I was still memorising quotes in the car. I have problems, big ones I know. I am being 100% honest. No one believes me when I say I don't study. No one understands, or else they think I am bragging if I end up doing well without studying. I always get the 'yeah right' look from people when I stress before exams. Here is how I 'study'. I tell myself I have to research every single thing about the topic. Say for English the belonging essay, I tell myself I have to:
1. Re read my prescribed
2. Re read my additional
3. Analyse the hell out of both texts
4. Put notes from class on word document
5. Google everything about belonging that I can, download all essays available
6. Go through all the handouts I have (even if this is like 300 pages of paper).
It is a problem with me because just googling belonging and downloading and making notes on all the essays I have takes me about 10 hours. I don't know what's wrong with me. I have to study in a structured way. And that list above was only half of the stuff I write down that I need to do before I can start memorising quotes or working on practise essays. This morning I still had 50 documents up, trying to go through all of them to get the best quotes and make the best notes. This doesn't even make sense when I'm writing this. But I have issues, okay? I don't know what's wrong with me and I can't seem to stop. Everything with me has to be structured and in order. Say that above list, if I had to go through all the handouts I had before downloading essays, I would freak. Just because it is number 6 on the list and not number 5, even if it doesn't matter. I guess you could say I am trying to do the absolute best notes I possibly can, but this isn't possible because I procrastinate and then I hate myself for skipping things on the list. I need to do every single thing until I end up with the perfect, best set of notes I absolutely can have. And that's where I start going downhill. When the night before an exam I am still going through word documents. Ever since I can remember, since beginning of year 12, I have always memorised my quotes either the period before an exam or during the car ride or on the train. Because I have a good memory and with the concerta and baroque music, I can memorise a 100 word paragraph in 15 minutes. I have never done a single practise essay unless it's for homework. Even when I hand in homework essays, it takes me 3 hours per paragraph. I have to get every word right, I have to research every single little thing there is about the topic before I can even start an essay. Even if it is just homework.
That's why I give up on the HSC. I have problems and they won't go away for uni. I need to take a break next year. I've told my mum, she got angry, I ignored her and I am still taking a gap year. I wrote this story for belonging and memorised it (fit the quote 1 window stimulus totally perfectly, thank God it has relationships and place in it). Creative writing is the only thing I can 'study' for because it doesn't feel like a total chore so I don't procrastinate as much when doing it. Anyway, this story is kind of how I feel at the moment (little bits obviously, not the whole thing). I wrote it 3 days before the exam and memorised it on the morning of the exam.
I hate myself because I don't know what's wrong with me. It sounds trivial, I know. Everyone I know just goes, 'Oh I procrastinate too...'
But it's gotten to the point for me where I think there is something seriously wrong with me. I don't know what to do anymore. And I absolutely hate it when people don't believe I have a problem, don't take me seriously when I say I am memorising a quote outside the hall before a HSC exam. Because they don't understand that procrastination for me is more like a disease than just a trivial thing that everyone goes through.
Funnily enough I don't really care anymore. I stuffed up everything so far except for the creative. I was doing so well in year 11 and now it's just gone downhill. Thank God International studies/journalism is only a 84.2 ATAR for me. This is because my subjects are good for the course bonus points (Music 2, Music extension, Adv eng, ext eng, modern history). All I need is at least a band 4 in each of those (or a band 2 in ext eng and band 3 in music ext) to get 5 bonus points. These 5 plus my 4 piano points equals a whopping 9 points (and I checked, the elite performers points add on top of the regular points). If I can't even manage that then I may as well work at Mcdonalds for the rest of my life.
I need to get out of here and just forget all this crap. I can't wait for when I'm on the flight to Paris.
Well, shit. No way am I going to succeed in uni then.
I don't think there is anyone else that understands the extent of my procrastination. I've done a bit of research (I am a researchaholic) and it is exceptionally sad that I have diagnosed myself with a combination of ADHD inattentive/OCPD/perfectionism (if that is a disease). The issue is I fit all of the criteria for all of these things except for some things. I don't lose things often at all, which makes me question whether I have ADHD. People with OCPD tend to not like to spend money on themselves and hoard it for future use, and I'm the opposite. Perfectionism I think may be a musician thing, but I'm not exactly full on 'everything HAS to be neat'. So now I'm just confused.
The thing is, no one believes me when I explain how I procrastinate, so I've stopped trying to explain because it makes me look like an idiot looking for attention. No one believes me when I'm waiting for an exam to start, freaking out and going, 'I haven't memorised my quotes properly yet'. The problem is, 30% of the time I marginally get away with it, 20% of the time I totally get away with it and the rest of the time it backfires on me. I can study two days before an essay, and still get ranked first. I can memorise my quotes 10 minutes before an english exam and it makes me hate myself when I get 18/20 for doing nothing. I almost had a heart attack when I got ranked 2nd in english extension having memorised my quotes the period before during music. My English trials were the perfect example. I remember exactly that I got 9/15, 10/15, 13/15, 13.5/20, 14/20, 18/20. The 13/15 and 18/20 were probably top 5 in the year of 70 girls, and the rest put me in the bottom 15 of the year. That is what I mean. It's hard to explain, but I am the only inconsistent person I know. Most people are totally consistent. They either get crap or good. But my ranking can fluctuate 50 places just in the trial exam.
The problem is I don't study. Today for paper 2, I was still memorising quotes in the car. I have problems, big ones I know. I am being 100% honest. No one believes me when I say I don't study. No one understands, or else they think I am bragging if I end up doing well without studying. I always get the 'yeah right' look from people when I stress before exams. Here is how I 'study'. I tell myself I have to research every single thing about the topic. Say for English the belonging essay, I tell myself I have to:
1. Re read my prescribed
2. Re read my additional
3. Analyse the hell out of both texts
4. Put notes from class on word document
5. Google everything about belonging that I can, download all essays available
6. Go through all the handouts I have (even if this is like 300 pages of paper).
It is a problem with me because just googling belonging and downloading and making notes on all the essays I have takes me about 10 hours. I don't know what's wrong with me. I have to study in a structured way. And that list above was only half of the stuff I write down that I need to do before I can start memorising quotes or working on practise essays. This morning I still had 50 documents up, trying to go through all of them to get the best quotes and make the best notes. This doesn't even make sense when I'm writing this. But I have issues, okay? I don't know what's wrong with me and I can't seem to stop. Everything with me has to be structured and in order. Say that above list, if I had to go through all the handouts I had before downloading essays, I would freak. Just because it is number 6 on the list and not number 5, even if it doesn't matter. I guess you could say I am trying to do the absolute best notes I possibly can, but this isn't possible because I procrastinate and then I hate myself for skipping things on the list. I need to do every single thing until I end up with the perfect, best set of notes I absolutely can have. And that's where I start going downhill. When the night before an exam I am still going through word documents. Ever since I can remember, since beginning of year 12, I have always memorised my quotes either the period before an exam or during the car ride or on the train. Because I have a good memory and with the concerta and baroque music, I can memorise a 100 word paragraph in 15 minutes. I have never done a single practise essay unless it's for homework. Even when I hand in homework essays, it takes me 3 hours per paragraph. I have to get every word right, I have to research every single little thing there is about the topic before I can even start an essay. Even if it is just homework.
That's why I give up on the HSC. I have problems and they won't go away for uni. I need to take a break next year. I've told my mum, she got angry, I ignored her and I am still taking a gap year. I wrote this story for belonging and memorised it (fit the quote 1 window stimulus totally perfectly, thank God it has relationships and place in it). Creative writing is the only thing I can 'study' for because it doesn't feel like a total chore so I don't procrastinate as much when doing it. Anyway, this story is kind of how I feel at the moment (little bits obviously, not the whole thing). I wrote it 3 days before the exam and memorised it on the morning of the exam.
‘It was a freak accident,’ they told me. ‘Such a tragedy,
still seems impossible…mountain was so peaceful, weather was perfect…’
No one understands better than I do, the deceivingly
dazzling purity of that landscape, its outline still hauntingly imprinted into
my memory.
I can close my eyes at night here and listen to the
almost-familiar noises of beeping taxi horns, bustling chatter, and faint
laughter drifting from the single tiny apartment window. Somewhere in my mind,
where these sounds of Shanghai slowly fade into nothingness, I drift a million
miles away. They said it was very early morning when it happened. The ice still
partially frozen, yet slowly melting in the rays of golden sunlight emerging
from behind the few wispy clouds and cool blue sky. The sudden sharpness of
crunching ice puncturing perfectly still air. Spray of dusty ice and snow
particles, momentarily blinding. Blunt black rock speckled with flecks of pale
grey and blanketed by a thick, white layer of snow. The top of the world, a
hazy vision in the cloudy altitude. Less than ten seconds later, my father
would slip through a crevasse into the deep, dark heart of Mount Everest.
No body, no funeral. Instead, a ceremony at the local temple
where thin wisps of smoke curled around a statue of Buddha, where my eyes
watered and nose burned from the suffocating scent of incense. My mother’s
quiet sobs and the dry brittleness of wood percussion sounding amidst a
metallic tinkling of bells. A monk, sitting upon a worn red cushion on the brown
floor, leading a chant, voice eerie and high-pitched. I gazed past the bowed
heads of our entire village kneeling, until my eyes fixated upon the peeling
rust paint of the window. I looked out at the mountain range, at the sparse
splattering of grey stone that emerged from beneath the white snow. I jerked my
head away quickly, before my eyes could seek out the tallest peak. Outside,
tattered prayer flags fluttered in the gentle breeze. I knelt, in my village
temple, with my people surrounding me. People I could eventually forget. People
who would try to convince, and later condemn.
A blurred, continuous stream of crying and wailing and
consoling around me, seeping through the thin walls. When this eventually
ceased, I could no longer avoid the inevitable. As I faced her, the guilty
words had barely begun to spill from my mouth when her eyes flashed and
narrowed. I could gauge the precise moment when the yelling would begin. It
made me want to grit my teeth and scream, but I did neither. I stood there,
reactionless, except for the droplets of helplessness and frustration, pooling
in my eyes, threatening to overflow. It was always the same, with her. The
exact infuriating illogicality I kept hearing repeatedly, time and time again.
Traditionsdutiesculturetraditionsdutiesculture…
She was my mother, and yet I could not remember the last
time that we had understood each other.
How could I have stayed? Two thousand dollars per trek,
transporting global tourists up and down our sacred mountain during the
climbing season. How could I, when my father was already eternally entrapped in
that mountain’s frozen cemetery, after climbing and climbing at my mother’s
urging? It was our culture and tradition that became my duty after my father
was taken, my people would remind me. It was an unjust façade that covered real
tradition. Having to relinquish mountaineering tradition to accommodate strangers.
Having to let go of the solitary climbing I had once cherished, in order to
feel the thick wads of colourful rupees in hand and be able to afford Converse
shoes and Big Macs in Kathmandu.
Shortly afterwards, I ran. Ran until I entered a new world
of buses and buildings and business suits. Wanted to keep running until I could
flick through the album of memories, carefully extract the images of that
landscape and village and tear them up until they merely resembled nothing more
than shredded paper prayer flags. And I ran until eventually, as the months
passed by in my tiny drab Shanghai studio apartment, I could somewhat convince
myself that I had almost escaped.
I returned only once. As soon as I set foot in the village,
whispers of ‘deserted family’ and ‘selfish’ and ‘corrupt’ followed me, all the
way to my old childhood home. In the tiny house, we drank tea out of cracked
white china as I talked and talked, filling the uncomfortable silence with Shanghai
and skyscrapers and supermarkets.
After that there were less phone calls and more excuses.
Still, the barrier of ice that I had formed against my mother, previously as
impenetrable as the one that had killed my father, seemed to thaw with each
passing year.
In the morning, I stare up at the dreary dust-coloured Shanghai
sky. I find myself yearning once more for a sky blinding in its vivid blue.
Deep regret forms when I watch my young children. I have not taught them how to
speak the language of my childhood, or shown them my mountains, or brought them
to a Buddhist ceremony. The previously
suppressed memories threaten to resurface.
I return to my mountains, wife and children in tow. I face
the tallest peak for the first time in years, its outline exactly as I have
remembered from long ago. I watch as my wife picks up a torn prayer flag that
has fallen near the temple. She examines it and then offers it to one of our
curiously watching children. I turn around and knock on the old falling-apart
wooden door. It opens, and for a split second I stare into her wonderfully
familiar face.
I can run from everything, all of the culture and tradition
and duties, but I cannot escape what truly matters the most.
As I walk into her warm, welcoming arms, I glance up at the
mountains of my childhood and absorb their breathtaking beauty once again.
I hate myself because I don't know what's wrong with me. It sounds trivial, I know. Everyone I know just goes, 'Oh I procrastinate too...'
But it's gotten to the point for me where I think there is something seriously wrong with me. I don't know what to do anymore. And I absolutely hate it when people don't believe I have a problem, don't take me seriously when I say I am memorising a quote outside the hall before a HSC exam. Because they don't understand that procrastination for me is more like a disease than just a trivial thing that everyone goes through.
Funnily enough I don't really care anymore. I stuffed up everything so far except for the creative. I was doing so well in year 11 and now it's just gone downhill. Thank God International studies/journalism is only a 84.2 ATAR for me. This is because my subjects are good for the course bonus points (Music 2, Music extension, Adv eng, ext eng, modern history). All I need is at least a band 4 in each of those (or a band 2 in ext eng and band 3 in music ext) to get 5 bonus points. These 5 plus my 4 piano points equals a whopping 9 points (and I checked, the elite performers points add on top of the regular points). If I can't even manage that then I may as well work at Mcdonalds for the rest of my life.
I need to get out of here and just forget all this crap. I can't wait for when I'm on the flight to Paris.
Sunday, October 13, 2013
Insomnia
It is currently 12:56am in the morning, and my HSC exam is tomorrow. I cannot sleep. I haven't experienced insomnia in ages actually (usually I am so tired from lack of sleep I can't get enough of it). I am definitely not the type that gets insomnia from stress. The only time I could remember being semi-insomniac was the night before my piano diploma exam. That was it. At first I couldn't figure out why I can't sleep today but I realised, I had like a vanilla coke (a little bottle) at like 9pm ish. That's why. I couldn't figure out why a sugar high would give me insomnia, but then I realised coke has caffeine. That, paired with the 27mg concerta in my system equals wide awake, super concentration. But not sure if I'll be so brain-clear tomorrow. I shouldn't take the 27mg today again, but goddammit I need it to memorise. That paired with my baroque music works wonders. Hope it doesn't give me more insomnia (I never usually get insomnia from these meds. Apparently if you never get insomnia from taking concerta, it means that you actually legitimately have ADHD).
I will be taking a gap year. 95% sure. The other 5% is based on my mum and my HSC results. I have not broken the pleasant surprise to my mum yet, and she would be pretty furious. I reckon I may just ring her up from Paris one day and be like, 'hey mum I'm not coming back home for awhile'. Nothing she can do about it when I turn 18. So might do it in Paris, she doesn't need to know I changed my plane ticket. My ticket was $1800 for Sydney to Shanghai to Paris back to Sydney, which is not a bad price at all. I emailed STA today to see if I could change my ticket just for the one way without the return to Sydney. The maximum refund the guy would give me was $177 which is ridiculous, that return ticket back to Sydney from Paris should be worth at least $700, and if they have surcharges for cancellations I should get at least $400 back. He wouldn't tell me the latest date I could claim the refund, either. I want to go to STA in person and ask for the cancellation to see if different salespeople offer different refund amounts. But I can't bothered to do that until after the HSC (more like I don't have the time). And by the time 31 Oct rolls around, even the measly $177 refund might be no longer available.
Fuck, a giant spider just waltzed across my desk INCHES away from my arm and crawled across this very keyboard. Sprayed the hell out of it with bug spray (keeping it handy in the study where bugs show up on average once a week in the hot weather). I hope that spider is dead by now. I was spraying behind my other computer like crazy, so now my other laptop is covered in disgusting bug spray. That spider BETTER be dead, and I'm not about to check on it either. Dead spiders freak me out just as much as live ones. It annoys me to no end that I find on average 1 or 2 ants per day in the study, just casually crawling around. But there aren't giant hoardes of ants or anything so that confuses me, where is their nest?? Eurgh now I have probably poisoned my brain with the bug spray or something, I sprayed so much of it. Especially when this room already stinks of bug spray half the time. Where were those candles from bath and body works. Now I have the creepy crawlies and every 30 seconds I feel like there may be a bug on me somewhere.
Moved to my bedroom now (bug spray in hand, just in case). Arghhhh.
I am in a better mood now because of the sugar high. Even attempting to make a last minute fail study plan. Trying to make myself feel better. After all, as one of the English teachers said, the HSC is designed to be attainable for students my age.
-14 October I will get home at around 3 ish at the latest. MAKE NOTES FOR PAPER 2.
Fay/Jane should not be too hard because that was the one essay I nailed for trials, and I could use the notes from that as the arguments I made could sort of fit most questions I think. Julius Caesar, I have quite a few band 6/state ranking essays for that. So take notes from those essays and bullshit my way through the additionals. Harwood I am most worried about. They better not specify the poem. I don't think The violets or At mornington will get asked, because they have been done in previous years. That leaves 5 more poems. Out of those, I will be ruling out (possibly) Triste Triste because it is really sexual so there is the chance they probably won't specify that...Harwood was the one module I completely, utterly zoned out on which was not a good idea because it's so bloody difficult. I will just have to resort to memorising quotes and making up bullshit ideas that don't make sense. Oh God and there's the stupid textual integrity and critics too. So safe to say Harwood will not go well. It is really based on luck when it comes to cramming for advanced. You can flunk some things last minute but you can also fluke things last minute too. In the trials I legitimately remember get ranked like 40-something in one essay and then 3rd in another. The inconsistency is totally ridiculous.
-15-21 October: study one modern topic per day, alternate this with General. Modern surprisingly I have managed to convince myself that it won't be too bad. I have state ranking notes and essays and custom-compiled historiography quotes too, so really I should just read through all the bazillion study notes I have downloaded from boredofstudies, and by the time I read through all of them the info would have stuck in my mind. Then I'd just have to memorise the history quotes, easy. Plus you can make up historians anyway if you forget, it's not like the marker would know. Kollontai I am quite chilled about, because it is more focused on evaluation and using brain during exam and historical debate rather than knowing lots of content. WWI will be chillaxed, source based crap. Indochina, I actually worked my ass off for that last Indochina assessment and finally topped K and G, my main competitors, so I'm semi not too worried. Russia, I am quite concerned about. I reckon I will just do Stalinism and nothing else if I run out of time, because there is guaranteed to be a question on that as they haven't asked it in awhile. But Russia is the topic I zoned out most on and it's the most confusing one too. Overall modern is not too bad because my entire class is really good (I think the whole class is at least mid band 5 standard except for like 4 people out of a class of 15). Only one person in the modern class, C, does standard english so we should be able to do good essays as a class on the whole. Especially as K, the class genius, has probably gotten less than full marks only like 3 times max since the beginning of year 11, so I am predicting state ranking for her.
General, of course, I am not worried about. In fact I could even say that doing maths relaxes me. There is something methodical and calming about general because you don't learn much new content, it's all the stuff you did in junior years and easier. So I think my general and modern internal rankings are the only 2 subjects I didn't stuff up, which would help me big time.
-22-28 October: This is the nightmare week I will not look forward to. Who schedules a music 2 exam at 3:25pm???? WHAT THE HECK WERE THEY THINKING? I can imagine myself straining my ears trying to listen to the exam CD in the damn music building when school ends at 3:20 and the exam starts 5 minutes later. Eurghh. And it ends at 5pm. FIVE PM. When I live so far away from school and then the next morning I have extension english at 9:25am. So I could not do last minute cram for English. My plan for the week beginning 22 Oct is to tackle the musicology scores, memorise music quotes, memorise all the concepts of music, do a tonne of interval training and melodic/rhythmic dictation, go through past papers like mad. Then on the side I will somehow try and manage to pull off an ext creative, memorise parts of it (the ones that would suit any question). The ext essay I am not worried about, for some reason I always seem to go okay on extension essays even when they are done last minute. I always get shocked at my extension essay marks because I expect them to be way worse than what I get, and I get shocked at my advanced essay marks because I expect them to be higher than what I really get.
So eng adv paper 2, extension creative and music will be the death of me for sure.
Overall I am happy with my exam timetable though. THANK YOU BOS FOR NOT BEING SADISTIC FOR ONCE. I have the 2 english exams, then a five day break before Modern with General the day after (but it's general...so I don't care). Then I have another 6 day break before Music with Ext eng the day after (this is the only sucky thing on my timetable). Then a one day break before SOR (which I reckon one day is enough to study for especially as both SOR I classes are really, really good, in that the average is usually an A, so the class would pull me up if I did badly).
One more thing: I did find my gap year family. So after I au pair in Paris and after I finish my Europe tour, starting from 1 March I will au pair for a family with SIX children. 5 girls and 1 boy. (10, 8, 7, 3, 2, and 7 months old). Insane I know. But sounds interesting. All will be at school (3 year old at preschool). 2 year old and 7 months old are all I need to worry about, from 9am to 6pm. I work from 9-6 three or four days a week (So I get at least 3 days off), and I get paid 400 pounds a month which is a lot compared to other au pair jobs. In Paris I only get paid 266 pounds per month, and it's harder work there too because I'd actually have to teach. I can't imagine London being a whole lot more expensive to live in than Paris anyway, I think both cities are quite expensive. So really the amount I am getting paid in Paris is not much at all. And wait for it. The mum wants a 7th baby, she will be pregnant by the time she returns to work next March. I was totally honest with her, told her that I had next to no experience with babies, and she said that before she returned to work she'd show me the ropes. You might wonder how I even got the job (jobs in countries like England are much harder to get than say in Spain or Italy where an au pair wage could be a measly 200 euros per month). Well, I'm a good bullshitter and I'm good at shamelessly promoting myself. Apparently she had a 'good warm feeling towards me' so I was hired. Which was kind of surprising considering she had like 400 interested applicants since first hiring au pairs in 2009. Actually it's not that much bullshitting, it's not like I lied. I asked Host mum what she disliked about previous au pairs, and she said she has had people steal from her, use her toiletries and stolen clothes and used her credit cards, as well as an au pair that pretended she didn't smoke but actually did. I think with host families they want to focus more on personal qualities (well by that I mean as long as I'm normal, not a thief or a smoker). Which I am perfectly okay with, I'm pretty polite anyway with strangers and I take hints pretty well if they are important. I can see where the host mum is coming from, I mean if I were a mother I would care much more about whether the au pair is a thief than whether they could change a nappy or not. I did tell her I was more than willing to learn the basics of infant care. Gotta start somewhere, right? Although I do admit I mainly chose this family because of the money (and well it is a different country too, plus it was convenient as my tour ended in London). I do prefer non-English speaking countries, I really wanted to go to Germany. But au pairs there legitimately get less than half of what I'd earn in the UK. So I'm fine with England, it's just not a country I would have imagined being interested to live in. It sounds a bit boring and Australia-like, but London sounds cool so I guess I could just take the 6 months to explore every nook and cranny of London.
They have like 1000 photos on Facebook and they seem nice enough, they don't seem like the crazy poor family type that has this many kids for welfare benefits. Parents have been married 11 years and they have a 5 bedroom house and they both work in the local hospital as radiologists or something. I get my own apparently completely purple bedroom but no ensuite so boo. Though apparently the kids all use their bathroom, so there wouldn't really be anyone else using my bathroom except for kids' teeth cleaning and when the younger ones need baths.They are agreeing to hire me a piano (I offer to pay for this because I don't mind, it's only 190 pounds for 6 month hire plus the 75 pound delivery cost). I will au pair near London (30 minute train ride away) for 6 months until mid-August 2014, because I can only stay for up to 6 months without a visa and I can't apply for one because I won't be in Australia to go to the embassy here.
The thing I am a bit concerned about is bank accounts. Obviously I can't open one overseas because technically, without a visa I am a tourist and not allowed to make money. The only thing I can think of is to hoard the cash from Paris, and also hoard the cash from London, then ask host mum at end of my stay if I can go with her to her bank so she can transfer the money to my Australian account for me. Either that, or just try my best to keep the money safely until I go to my next country in August (I think Norway, Netherlands or Germany as they are the only non-English speaking countries that allow you to apply for an au pair visa AFTER you have already arrived in the country, not before). Then I would be allowed, with an au pair visa, to open a bank account in that country and deposit my earnings from France and England too. Bit risky though, as it is a lot of money to be hoarding without a bank account especially when travelling.
I will be taking a gap year. 95% sure. The other 5% is based on my mum and my HSC results. I have not broken the pleasant surprise to my mum yet, and she would be pretty furious. I reckon I may just ring her up from Paris one day and be like, 'hey mum I'm not coming back home for awhile'. Nothing she can do about it when I turn 18. So might do it in Paris, she doesn't need to know I changed my plane ticket. My ticket was $1800 for Sydney to Shanghai to Paris back to Sydney, which is not a bad price at all. I emailed STA today to see if I could change my ticket just for the one way without the return to Sydney. The maximum refund the guy would give me was $177 which is ridiculous, that return ticket back to Sydney from Paris should be worth at least $700, and if they have surcharges for cancellations I should get at least $400 back. He wouldn't tell me the latest date I could claim the refund, either. I want to go to STA in person and ask for the cancellation to see if different salespeople offer different refund amounts. But I can't bothered to do that until after the HSC (more like I don't have the time). And by the time 31 Oct rolls around, even the measly $177 refund might be no longer available.
Fuck, a giant spider just waltzed across my desk INCHES away from my arm and crawled across this very keyboard. Sprayed the hell out of it with bug spray (keeping it handy in the study where bugs show up on average once a week in the hot weather). I hope that spider is dead by now. I was spraying behind my other computer like crazy, so now my other laptop is covered in disgusting bug spray. That spider BETTER be dead, and I'm not about to check on it either. Dead spiders freak me out just as much as live ones. It annoys me to no end that I find on average 1 or 2 ants per day in the study, just casually crawling around. But there aren't giant hoardes of ants or anything so that confuses me, where is their nest?? Eurgh now I have probably poisoned my brain with the bug spray or something, I sprayed so much of it. Especially when this room already stinks of bug spray half the time. Where were those candles from bath and body works. Now I have the creepy crawlies and every 30 seconds I feel like there may be a bug on me somewhere.
Moved to my bedroom now (bug spray in hand, just in case). Arghhhh.
I am in a better mood now because of the sugar high. Even attempting to make a last minute fail study plan. Trying to make myself feel better. After all, as one of the English teachers said, the HSC is designed to be attainable for students my age.
-14 October I will get home at around 3 ish at the latest. MAKE NOTES FOR PAPER 2.
Fay/Jane should not be too hard because that was the one essay I nailed for trials, and I could use the notes from that as the arguments I made could sort of fit most questions I think. Julius Caesar, I have quite a few band 6/state ranking essays for that. So take notes from those essays and bullshit my way through the additionals. Harwood I am most worried about. They better not specify the poem. I don't think The violets or At mornington will get asked, because they have been done in previous years. That leaves 5 more poems. Out of those, I will be ruling out (possibly) Triste Triste because it is really sexual so there is the chance they probably won't specify that...Harwood was the one module I completely, utterly zoned out on which was not a good idea because it's so bloody difficult. I will just have to resort to memorising quotes and making up bullshit ideas that don't make sense. Oh God and there's the stupid textual integrity and critics too. So safe to say Harwood will not go well. It is really based on luck when it comes to cramming for advanced. You can flunk some things last minute but you can also fluke things last minute too. In the trials I legitimately remember get ranked like 40-something in one essay and then 3rd in another. The inconsistency is totally ridiculous.
-15-21 October: study one modern topic per day, alternate this with General. Modern surprisingly I have managed to convince myself that it won't be too bad. I have state ranking notes and essays and custom-compiled historiography quotes too, so really I should just read through all the bazillion study notes I have downloaded from boredofstudies, and by the time I read through all of them the info would have stuck in my mind. Then I'd just have to memorise the history quotes, easy. Plus you can make up historians anyway if you forget, it's not like the marker would know. Kollontai I am quite chilled about, because it is more focused on evaluation and using brain during exam and historical debate rather than knowing lots of content. WWI will be chillaxed, source based crap. Indochina, I actually worked my ass off for that last Indochina assessment and finally topped K and G, my main competitors, so I'm semi not too worried. Russia, I am quite concerned about. I reckon I will just do Stalinism and nothing else if I run out of time, because there is guaranteed to be a question on that as they haven't asked it in awhile. But Russia is the topic I zoned out most on and it's the most confusing one too. Overall modern is not too bad because my entire class is really good (I think the whole class is at least mid band 5 standard except for like 4 people out of a class of 15). Only one person in the modern class, C, does standard english so we should be able to do good essays as a class on the whole. Especially as K, the class genius, has probably gotten less than full marks only like 3 times max since the beginning of year 11, so I am predicting state ranking for her.
General, of course, I am not worried about. In fact I could even say that doing maths relaxes me. There is something methodical and calming about general because you don't learn much new content, it's all the stuff you did in junior years and easier. So I think my general and modern internal rankings are the only 2 subjects I didn't stuff up, which would help me big time.
-22-28 October: This is the nightmare week I will not look forward to. Who schedules a music 2 exam at 3:25pm???? WHAT THE HECK WERE THEY THINKING? I can imagine myself straining my ears trying to listen to the exam CD in the damn music building when school ends at 3:20 and the exam starts 5 minutes later. Eurghh. And it ends at 5pm. FIVE PM. When I live so far away from school and then the next morning I have extension english at 9:25am. So I could not do last minute cram for English. My plan for the week beginning 22 Oct is to tackle the musicology scores, memorise music quotes, memorise all the concepts of music, do a tonne of interval training and melodic/rhythmic dictation, go through past papers like mad. Then on the side I will somehow try and manage to pull off an ext creative, memorise parts of it (the ones that would suit any question). The ext essay I am not worried about, for some reason I always seem to go okay on extension essays even when they are done last minute. I always get shocked at my extension essay marks because I expect them to be way worse than what I get, and I get shocked at my advanced essay marks because I expect them to be higher than what I really get.
So eng adv paper 2, extension creative and music will be the death of me for sure.
Overall I am happy with my exam timetable though. THANK YOU BOS FOR NOT BEING SADISTIC FOR ONCE. I have the 2 english exams, then a five day break before Modern with General the day after (but it's general...so I don't care). Then I have another 6 day break before Music with Ext eng the day after (this is the only sucky thing on my timetable). Then a one day break before SOR (which I reckon one day is enough to study for especially as both SOR I classes are really, really good, in that the average is usually an A, so the class would pull me up if I did badly).
One more thing: I did find my gap year family. So after I au pair in Paris and after I finish my Europe tour, starting from 1 March I will au pair for a family with SIX children. 5 girls and 1 boy. (10, 8, 7, 3, 2, and 7 months old). Insane I know. But sounds interesting. All will be at school (3 year old at preschool). 2 year old and 7 months old are all I need to worry about, from 9am to 6pm. I work from 9-6 three or four days a week (So I get at least 3 days off), and I get paid 400 pounds a month which is a lot compared to other au pair jobs. In Paris I only get paid 266 pounds per month, and it's harder work there too because I'd actually have to teach. I can't imagine London being a whole lot more expensive to live in than Paris anyway, I think both cities are quite expensive. So really the amount I am getting paid in Paris is not much at all. And wait for it. The mum wants a 7th baby, she will be pregnant by the time she returns to work next March. I was totally honest with her, told her that I had next to no experience with babies, and she said that before she returned to work she'd show me the ropes. You might wonder how I even got the job (jobs in countries like England are much harder to get than say in Spain or Italy where an au pair wage could be a measly 200 euros per month). Well, I'm a good bullshitter and I'm good at shamelessly promoting myself. Apparently she had a 'good warm feeling towards me' so I was hired. Which was kind of surprising considering she had like 400 interested applicants since first hiring au pairs in 2009. Actually it's not that much bullshitting, it's not like I lied. I asked Host mum what she disliked about previous au pairs, and she said she has had people steal from her, use her toiletries and stolen clothes and used her credit cards, as well as an au pair that pretended she didn't smoke but actually did. I think with host families they want to focus more on personal qualities (well by that I mean as long as I'm normal, not a thief or a smoker). Which I am perfectly okay with, I'm pretty polite anyway with strangers and I take hints pretty well if they are important. I can see where the host mum is coming from, I mean if I were a mother I would care much more about whether the au pair is a thief than whether they could change a nappy or not. I did tell her I was more than willing to learn the basics of infant care. Gotta start somewhere, right? Although I do admit I mainly chose this family because of the money (and well it is a different country too, plus it was convenient as my tour ended in London). I do prefer non-English speaking countries, I really wanted to go to Germany. But au pairs there legitimately get less than half of what I'd earn in the UK. So I'm fine with England, it's just not a country I would have imagined being interested to live in. It sounds a bit boring and Australia-like, but London sounds cool so I guess I could just take the 6 months to explore every nook and cranny of London.
They have like 1000 photos on Facebook and they seem nice enough, they don't seem like the crazy poor family type that has this many kids for welfare benefits. Parents have been married 11 years and they have a 5 bedroom house and they both work in the local hospital as radiologists or something. I get my own apparently completely purple bedroom but no ensuite so boo. Though apparently the kids all use their bathroom, so there wouldn't really be anyone else using my bathroom except for kids' teeth cleaning and when the younger ones need baths.They are agreeing to hire me a piano (I offer to pay for this because I don't mind, it's only 190 pounds for 6 month hire plus the 75 pound delivery cost). I will au pair near London (30 minute train ride away) for 6 months until mid-August 2014, because I can only stay for up to 6 months without a visa and I can't apply for one because I won't be in Australia to go to the embassy here.
The thing I am a bit concerned about is bank accounts. Obviously I can't open one overseas because technically, without a visa I am a tourist and not allowed to make money. The only thing I can think of is to hoard the cash from Paris, and also hoard the cash from London, then ask host mum at end of my stay if I can go with her to her bank so she can transfer the money to my Australian account for me. Either that, or just try my best to keep the money safely until I go to my next country in August (I think Norway, Netherlands or Germany as they are the only non-English speaking countries that allow you to apply for an au pair visa AFTER you have already arrived in the country, not before). Then I would be allowed, with an au pair visa, to open a bank account in that country and deposit my earnings from France and England too. Bit risky though, as it is a lot of money to be hoarding without a bank account especially when travelling.
Saturday, October 12, 2013
What is life
I'm just completely lost right now. I have no idea what I'm doing in life. Sound dramatic? Well how sad is it that I'm already at this point and I am freaking still underage.
I will be taking a gap year. I will fight like crazy until I will be able to. I need to escape. For the longest time, I had a plan. Study like crazy, get into dream course, be rich and live the good life.
Now, as I'm sitting here, still writing my belonging notes when my HSC exam is in two days' time, I am starting to face the reality of this. My dream course was always either law/international studies or journalism/international studies. I would think journalism would suit me better, but the only reason why I put law above journalism was so I could be like F you in the face of my father, his parents and my piano teacher. It's hard to explain but it's a Chinese thing. Obviously I'm not idiotic enough to only just want to do law to rub it in their faces. I'm actually genuinely interested in it (if I only wanted the prestige or whatever I'd be doing medicine because that would be an even bigger deal in my family). Law is something I certainly don't mind doing, and neither is journalism. For some reason the only course I am absolutely 100% certain I want to do is international studies. But I want to still do a dual degree.
I've given up. I won't get into law. Well, when I was a little idiot and used to dream, I wanted to do law/international studies at Sydney uni which is a 99.7 ATAR. The fact that I even thought about that was ludicrous. Clearly I am way to unrealistic and it's too late now to realise I should've had my head out of the clouds long ago. Did I really think my plans would just fall into place magically? I was such an idealist. There were only two things I wanted more than anything, and this probably goes way back to year 9 even. I thought, if these 2 things will come true I will be happy and all the shit that high school has been will be all worth it. Those 2 things were to get into law at Sydney uni and get an encore nomination for music. I was such a little dreamer. The encore nomination, needless to say, didn't happen. Dance of the Reed Flutes killed me. It is a deceptively easy piece but I so hated it. I don't know why my teacher thought it would be a good idea to make me play it (she really doesn't have much HSC experience, despite her claims). It is probably grade 6/7 standard only, and it was the one pieces I butchered each and every time I performed it. I still don't know why. But needless to say you cannot butcher such an easy, well-known piece. It's not difficult to bluff your way through a hard lesser-known piece. Your mistakes don't even get noticed, and if I was still making noticeable mistakes due to nerves or stopping in the middle of pieces after all these years I may as well have quit. But the Nutcracker, for god's sake. Stupidest idea ever to play music from it. It's not even originally composed for piano, and it is so so well known that mistakes are ridiculously noticeable. I would've put much more effort and joy into learning a difficult Chopin ballade, even. I wish she let me choose my own pieces. She probably would've laughed, scoffed at me if I'd told her I wanted to attempt a Chopin ballade. She doesn't realise that the more I enjoy a piece, and the more the piece I enjoy challenges me, the better I play. That's why Gnomenreigen ended up being one of my favourites.
I'm waiting at the moment for my mum to bring dinner (I also asked her to get me some blueberry cheesecake frozen yogurt). Anyway, I always thought I'd get into law at UNSW, if not Sydney. The atar for UNSW is 99.65, but with my 4 bonus points I can get in at 95.65. I didn't think much of it before. I used to think, you hear about all these people that get 99 point whatever. Surely 95 is not that hard if I study my arse off. Key word IF. Well, I'm learning to stop dreaming in that way. 95 is not going to happen. Not when my grades have fallen so much from year 11. Not when I am doing way less in Advanced than what I am capable of. Not when I am screwed for music.
Music is going to be the death of me. That, and Advanced. I don't know what I'm doing in Advanced for paper 2, whatsoever. Haven't started studying for it yet. Haven't done a single practice HSC paper at all for anything. Music 2, thanks to Mr L and my own laziness, I have no idea what to do for the essay. I have never been taught properly. I do not have perfect pitch and can't do melodic dictation at all, or rhythmic for that matter. I can't identify weird string or trumpet symbols on the score. I can't even identify chords properly. Worst of all, it counts for like up to half of my exam mark (can't remember exactly how much, Mr L didn't know either). My composition was shit. Ms B ended up burning the CD for me and I still have the sneaking suspicion she may have purposefully sabotaged it by doing something iffy with the recording before sending it in to the BOS, like altering my composition or cutting it off short or something. I predict the nutcracker performance got me a low B, the Hiscocks a mid B and if I was lucky the Chopin got me a mid A. Combining my musicology, composition and performance marks, I won't even get a high band 5 which is horrible considering the amount of money and time I have wasted on music.
So no law for me. As journalism/int studies is a brand new course at UNSW, I don't know the ATAR requirement for that yet. I predict the ATAR for the course would be around 93.2, as the int studies ATAR is that amount and journalism is lower than that anyway, so for the combined degree they would probably look at the int studies ATAR. For me it would be 89.2 and if I can't even manage that, I may as well freaking put more effort into my con audition as it looks like I'll be stuck with music studies/arts which is like 75 or something. And if I don't get accepted because my audition is too bad? I may as well go overseas for 5 years au pairing my way through my effed up life and return to enrol as a mature age student.
And that's why I want to take a gap year. To get away from it all. I could not stand the thought of going to uni next year not being able to do international studies. I can't stand my judgemental grandparents harping on about how bad music is. I don't think I want to do music anyway. The con is too prestigious, I would feel intimidated there and there are no career paths I can think of that I would choose for arts or music. And if I didn't get into the con, UNSW music is too crappy so that wouldn't be good either.
I need a year all to myself to figure life out otherwise I would just be floating my way through Uni not knowing what the hell I was doing. I want to escape for a year and be able to temporarily forget about all this shit. I want to get away from my mother and having to live with her and her husband. She's bipolar I think. One moment she is narrowly tolerable and then the next she will blow up. I don't predict her husband lasting too long. My mother is too insufferable to have any proper friends or relationships with others. That's why she mopes about in the house all day telling me off.
I think my biggest fear is to be dependent on someone. I was calculating money things the other day, and rent matters if I were to move out. I don't earn anywhere near enough to support myself, even with youth allowance. I hate being dependent on my mother and being obliged to let her have this power over me. She would kill me if I went for the gap year.
I will be taking a gap year. I will fight like crazy until I will be able to. I need to escape. For the longest time, I had a plan. Study like crazy, get into dream course, be rich and live the good life.
Now, as I'm sitting here, still writing my belonging notes when my HSC exam is in two days' time, I am starting to face the reality of this. My dream course was always either law/international studies or journalism/international studies. I would think journalism would suit me better, but the only reason why I put law above journalism was so I could be like F you in the face of my father, his parents and my piano teacher. It's hard to explain but it's a Chinese thing. Obviously I'm not idiotic enough to only just want to do law to rub it in their faces. I'm actually genuinely interested in it (if I only wanted the prestige or whatever I'd be doing medicine because that would be an even bigger deal in my family). Law is something I certainly don't mind doing, and neither is journalism. For some reason the only course I am absolutely 100% certain I want to do is international studies. But I want to still do a dual degree.
I've given up. I won't get into law. Well, when I was a little idiot and used to dream, I wanted to do law/international studies at Sydney uni which is a 99.7 ATAR. The fact that I even thought about that was ludicrous. Clearly I am way to unrealistic and it's too late now to realise I should've had my head out of the clouds long ago. Did I really think my plans would just fall into place magically? I was such an idealist. There were only two things I wanted more than anything, and this probably goes way back to year 9 even. I thought, if these 2 things will come true I will be happy and all the shit that high school has been will be all worth it. Those 2 things were to get into law at Sydney uni and get an encore nomination for music. I was such a little dreamer. The encore nomination, needless to say, didn't happen. Dance of the Reed Flutes killed me. It is a deceptively easy piece but I so hated it. I don't know why my teacher thought it would be a good idea to make me play it (she really doesn't have much HSC experience, despite her claims). It is probably grade 6/7 standard only, and it was the one pieces I butchered each and every time I performed it. I still don't know why. But needless to say you cannot butcher such an easy, well-known piece. It's not difficult to bluff your way through a hard lesser-known piece. Your mistakes don't even get noticed, and if I was still making noticeable mistakes due to nerves or stopping in the middle of pieces after all these years I may as well have quit. But the Nutcracker, for god's sake. Stupidest idea ever to play music from it. It's not even originally composed for piano, and it is so so well known that mistakes are ridiculously noticeable. I would've put much more effort and joy into learning a difficult Chopin ballade, even. I wish she let me choose my own pieces. She probably would've laughed, scoffed at me if I'd told her I wanted to attempt a Chopin ballade. She doesn't realise that the more I enjoy a piece, and the more the piece I enjoy challenges me, the better I play. That's why Gnomenreigen ended up being one of my favourites.
I'm waiting at the moment for my mum to bring dinner (I also asked her to get me some blueberry cheesecake frozen yogurt). Anyway, I always thought I'd get into law at UNSW, if not Sydney. The atar for UNSW is 99.65, but with my 4 bonus points I can get in at 95.65. I didn't think much of it before. I used to think, you hear about all these people that get 99 point whatever. Surely 95 is not that hard if I study my arse off. Key word IF. Well, I'm learning to stop dreaming in that way. 95 is not going to happen. Not when my grades have fallen so much from year 11. Not when I am doing way less in Advanced than what I am capable of. Not when I am screwed for music.
Music is going to be the death of me. That, and Advanced. I don't know what I'm doing in Advanced for paper 2, whatsoever. Haven't started studying for it yet. Haven't done a single practice HSC paper at all for anything. Music 2, thanks to Mr L and my own laziness, I have no idea what to do for the essay. I have never been taught properly. I do not have perfect pitch and can't do melodic dictation at all, or rhythmic for that matter. I can't identify weird string or trumpet symbols on the score. I can't even identify chords properly. Worst of all, it counts for like up to half of my exam mark (can't remember exactly how much, Mr L didn't know either). My composition was shit. Ms B ended up burning the CD for me and I still have the sneaking suspicion she may have purposefully sabotaged it by doing something iffy with the recording before sending it in to the BOS, like altering my composition or cutting it off short or something. I predict the nutcracker performance got me a low B, the Hiscocks a mid B and if I was lucky the Chopin got me a mid A. Combining my musicology, composition and performance marks, I won't even get a high band 5 which is horrible considering the amount of money and time I have wasted on music.
So no law for me. As journalism/int studies is a brand new course at UNSW, I don't know the ATAR requirement for that yet. I predict the ATAR for the course would be around 93.2, as the int studies ATAR is that amount and journalism is lower than that anyway, so for the combined degree they would probably look at the int studies ATAR. For me it would be 89.2 and if I can't even manage that, I may as well freaking put more effort into my con audition as it looks like I'll be stuck with music studies/arts which is like 75 or something. And if I don't get accepted because my audition is too bad? I may as well go overseas for 5 years au pairing my way through my effed up life and return to enrol as a mature age student.
And that's why I want to take a gap year. To get away from it all. I could not stand the thought of going to uni next year not being able to do international studies. I can't stand my judgemental grandparents harping on about how bad music is. I don't think I want to do music anyway. The con is too prestigious, I would feel intimidated there and there are no career paths I can think of that I would choose for arts or music. And if I didn't get into the con, UNSW music is too crappy so that wouldn't be good either.
I need a year all to myself to figure life out otherwise I would just be floating my way through Uni not knowing what the hell I was doing. I want to escape for a year and be able to temporarily forget about all this shit. I want to get away from my mother and having to live with her and her husband. She's bipolar I think. One moment she is narrowly tolerable and then the next she will blow up. I don't predict her husband lasting too long. My mother is too insufferable to have any proper friends or relationships with others. That's why she mopes about in the house all day telling me off.
I think my biggest fear is to be dependent on someone. I was calculating money things the other day, and rent matters if I were to move out. I don't earn anywhere near enough to support myself, even with youth allowance. I hate being dependent on my mother and being obliged to let her have this power over me. She would kill me if I went for the gap year.
Saturday, October 5, 2013
à Paris
Given up on the HSC. Still not finished with frikkin belonging notes let alone anything else.
Been looking at a few places to visit in Paris. Will keep updating in the next couple of months. We'll start off with the cemeteries (in a death mood). Hey, when you're near Paris for over 2 months, you figure you'd have time to do less touristy stuff like look at graves...
-Pere Lachaise cemetery for random graves of famous people. Poulenc, Chopin (YES, CHOPIN!!!). Randomly enough, France Clidat (a concert pianist who taught my music tutor) is buried there too. Oh and Lyotard!!!! After all the bullshit we learned he could spin on meta-narratives in eng ext, how could I not visit his grave?
-Passy cemetery for Bao Dai (Vietnamese puppet emperor we had to learn about in modern), Princess Brasova (again, another modern thing. Wife of the Tsar's brother who abdicated), DEBUSSY.
-Levallois-Perret cemetery (RAVEL)
-Paris catacombs
-Marche d'Aligre for fruit and cheese
-Eric Kayser bakery for baguettes
-Louvre museum (Mona Lisa)
-Musee d'Orsay (only going if I have time. I'm really not an art aficionado, would have no idea what I was looking at, so would only just go for like van Gough and Monet and then leave after like 2 paintings)
-Natural History Museum
-Disneyland
-Sacre-coeur
-Gaite Lyrique
-St Germain - des -Pres
-Musee National du Moyen Age
-Conciergerie
-Bastille Square
-Eiffel tower
-Arc de Triomphe
-Champs-Elysees
-Chinatown
Been looking at a few places to visit in Paris. Will keep updating in the next couple of months. We'll start off with the cemeteries (in a death mood). Hey, when you're near Paris for over 2 months, you figure you'd have time to do less touristy stuff like look at graves...
-Pere Lachaise cemetery for random graves of famous people. Poulenc, Chopin (YES, CHOPIN!!!). Randomly enough, France Clidat (a concert pianist who taught my music tutor) is buried there too. Oh and Lyotard!!!! After all the bullshit we learned he could spin on meta-narratives in eng ext, how could I not visit his grave?
-Passy cemetery for Bao Dai (Vietnamese puppet emperor we had to learn about in modern), Princess Brasova (again, another modern thing. Wife of the Tsar's brother who abdicated), DEBUSSY.
-Levallois-Perret cemetery (RAVEL)
-Paris catacombs
-Marche d'Aligre for fruit and cheese
-Eric Kayser bakery for baguettes
-Louvre museum (Mona Lisa)
-Musee d'Orsay (only going if I have time. I'm really not an art aficionado, would have no idea what I was looking at, so would only just go for like van Gough and Monet and then leave after like 2 paintings)
-Natural History Museum
-Disneyland
-Sacre-coeur
-Gaite Lyrique
-St Germain - des -Pres
-Musee National du Moyen Age
-Conciergerie
-Bastille Square
-Eiffel tower
-Arc de Triomphe
-Champs-Elysees
-Chinatown
Wednesday, October 2, 2013
Another piano rant
My main point I'm trying to make is this: Ms B wasn't just merely 'another teacher I hate'. Every teacher I ever hated always had reason to hate me (I will admit), and there is no such thing as a teacher who treats each and every student like shit. Most teachers I ever hated only disliked certain people, not everyone, or otherwise may have had favourite students. Ms B was the exception, because she didn't hate me and there's a reason why she's leaving at the end of the year (just me complaining wouldn't have been enough for either her to be made redundant/get fired/decide to leave). There is also a reason why her old school's lockers got sprayed with F you Ms B, and for all her school-hopping too.We don't know why she's leaving, but I don't think she got fired, I think Dr H would have found a more creative way to get rid of her, as in the end surely they can't just fire a teacher because students claimed she 'screamed' at them. That's why she only told me I sucked when we were alone in a classroom, because I could never prove all the things she said to me. She was clever enough so that nothing she ever did could fully be interpreted as 'inappropriate' (the closest incident that could have been proven and may have gotten her under the 'fired' radar was probably the yr 11 switching exams issue, and she usually would've been able to think of a better excuse in those types of scenarios as a cover up, rather than simply 'it's good practise for HSC'. She probably had a brain fart on that one rare occasion). In the lecture theatre 10 minutes before a performance, she'd sometimes come up to me in front of everyone and reassure me, tell me I would be fine, when an hour ago when we were all alone she'd have told me my playing sucked. I rather think she got the message after so many people complained about her. Someone arrogant and control-freak like her wouldn't have been able to cope in a school where all the parents and students and other teachers knew everyone complained about her. She needed, after all, to keep herself in control, and you can't control people who no longer are scared of you or think of you as a joke. Heck, too much belonging and The Crucible, that's why I'm thinking this way. Haha, the permeation of fear facilitated by an individual who wields supreme power may determine the society's need for conformity, and hence belonging, in order to avoid drastic repercussions of alienation.
The day we found out she left (via girls' parents who heard it at a PA meeting), the yr 12's all were so happy. The fact that I was the only year 12 she taught and yet everyone in music 1 hated her, just goes to show that this is not a normal teacher who people merely disliked. The yr 11's were even more happy (because they would have been stuck with her next year). I'm happy for yr 11 violinist (though I don't think violinists would really be on Ms B's victim list, it was more the pianists). After all, the yr 11 girl has serious potential (encore nominee I'm betting), and Ms B would need to have the occasional 'musical genius' to exploit so she could say 'lookie here, our school is good at music'. She just always made sure she never 'nurtured' the pianists. Believe me, when I first came to the school I thought everyone sucked at piano, because I'd never really heard anyone in the lower year groups play anything good for like a whole year. Until I eventually heard some of them play (during the one music festival you could audition for voluntarily) and a few of them were actually quite good. At a regular school they too would have performed at school concerts and such, but because of Ms B's issues, she could never bring herself to acknowledge that there were talented pianists in yr 11 and 10 who did not get the opportunity to perform as they would have if they had been at a school with a good music department. I was the only exception, because technically she was my music extension teacher. When I performed, it looked good for her, because I was her 'student', and especially when I performed the ensemble piece at the big school concert, it looked like she had 'helped us rehearse' even though she had only been present at one rehearsal.
There was a reason why she never let any of us pianists perform solos, and at first when Rh brought up the 'insecure jealousy' thing, I thought 'yeah right' and actually thought she was crazy. Until I realised, and it made me feel better. I was never the type to ever get egotistical about piano, because of my own piano teacher and her strict ways (it is very hard to be egotistical when you have for years been compared every week to other students who are always better than you). Funnily enough, it was my own piano teacher who confirmed Rh's theory. Ms B was jealous. Of me, of my piano teacher's abilities, of Ms V's, and she was insecure about how the talented junior pianists would turn out by the time they got around to doing HSC music extension. I say this in the least egotistical way possible, but it is the truth. And as soon as Rh and my piano teacher helped me realise this, I no longer was affected as much by the negativity, or thought of my playing and hours and hours and hours of practice as futile and a failure. Then the performance anxiety would almost completely disappear, because Ms B had previously succeeded in making her own insecurities mine. And when you just get up on that stage, confident, knowing that you have done hours of practice, knowing that no one else has the right to judge, and your mind isn't full of Ms B's negativity, then the sweaty hands and dry mouth pretty much disappear. Ironically, my confidence as a performer also developed thanks to Ms B. It took the realisation of why Ms B loved hurting me intentionally, and it took me seeing it as a compliment that Ms B felt threatened by me and my piano teacher, to get rid of the performance anxiety. By the time of my last performance in front of the entire school, Ms B was no longer teaching me and my piano teacher, too, was no longer teaching me (though it had been a couple of years since my piano teacher had last made me feel like a failure, and my piano teacher was only doing this to get me to practise, not because she was a psychopath). Getting rid of the negativity and self-doubt these external forces could inflict upon me, and realising that Ms B and my piano teacher don't deserve my respect. I don't admire their ways of teaching, I don't admire them as people. Their opinions used to mean everything to me (in terms of my playing). I believed every word, and now I realise just because they are teachers, doesn't mean they were correct or deserved my respect. C deserves my respect. C proves her knowledge, doesn't pretend to know what she doesn't know. C tells me what I'm doing wrong and gives me creative ideas to fix it. The best thing about C? She always knew how much practice I did. Because no matter how many compliments or constructive criticisms C gave me, she would acknowledge those hours of practice regardless. Most importantly, C gave me a reason to keep playing, have the motivation to practise when my whole life I've had this whole huge struggle with this thing I am most insecure about, always doubting myself about. I never had the passion, I've always thought. Never was a musical genius, never enjoyed practising. According to C, there is no such thing as musical talent. You are born with genes that determine where your future passions may lie. And talent is basically what you make of the things you are passionate at. And C made a good point. Things like procrastination, she said no matter how much you make your brain do something, as long as your subconscious mind gives your conscious mind a reason not to do it, then your brain won't do it, and it's all about getting to the heart of why you inevitably will do/won't do something. And just like with procrastination, C reckons that if I wasn't passionate about piano, I would have quit long ago like all those other kids. That somehow, my subconscious mind would have given my conscious mind a strong enough reason to discontinue, to the point where no matter how much a parent pushes their child, the child will inevitably quit. Just like no matter how much I try and stop procrastinating, I inevitably procrastinate. What I'm still trying to figure out is how my subconscious mind is passionate about music and piano, even though my conscious mind denies this and blocks it out. C thinks it would be a shame if I didn't do it at uni. Maybe I can do it after all without feeling like an idiot amidst super-passionate musicians. She even thinks I have really unusually soft pianissimos which are a sign that someone is really musical. Really musical. I'd like to think she wasn't just saying it to make me feel better the day before my exam, but she isn't that type anyway, she's honest. I think 'musical' is what every musician wants to be labelled as. It's the highest compliment, I think. Not 'talented', not 'oh wow your hands can move so fast', not 'skilled' or 'proficient' or 'highly advanced', but 'musical', and I never expected someone to ever think of me in that way. 'Musical' is the best compliment anyone has ever given to me. It took awhile of coaxing (because I always find it awkward to play emotionally in front of people I know I'll see again. In front of examiners, I give it my most heart-wrenching performance haha because I know I'll never have to see them again). But B my cellist and C and even the violinist who I still don't know the name of, encouraged me to repeat the opening of that piano trio over and over until I could picture a funeral procession in my head. I then played that piece without picturing anything. Blankness. I wish I could say I felt the sadness of the music, but my head was like in another stratosphere. I wasn't thinking anything, but at the same time I was highly aware of the balance between the piano, the cello and the violin. And after that, C told me it was the best I'd ever played. That it made her think of her best friend at music college in London who'd died in a car crash when she was still young, and it made her feel all the anger and frustration, but all the beauty and passion too. I think that's the most amazing thing anyone has ever told me (heck that almost made me cry). B said she could really feel me feeling the music too, and that I was aware of both her and the violinist playing, even when I told them my mind was just blank. Then B my cellist thought maybe I felt emotions abstractly or something. Too confusing too go into.
And to this day I still can't say whether I truly enjoy piano, even though I've done it for 13 years. It's a bit like a cross between brushing my teeth, going jogging for 30 minutes, and doing the laundry (this doesn't make sense even to me). But at the same time, brushing your teeth, though so routine-like, makes you feel clean. Doing the laundry, stupidly enough, makes me feel like I've accomplished something, that satisfaction of completing a piece of menial housework. Going jogging releases endorphins and you feel like you've just done something good for your body, even when you're exhausted. A combination of that all that is what piano is like to me. Mental exhaustion coupled with occasional flashes of clarity when you play something nicely and then sudden surges of motivation and satisfaction when you get those certain hours completed, then back to mental exhaustion until it becomes daily routine. I can't imagine quitting it, though I don't even enjoy it either. But it's weird, like an old habit I have to keep. As soon as my HSC was done and over with, the first thing I did when I got home was choose some Lmus pieces to learn (just so I could maintain finger dexterity, I told myself, and improve sightreading). I don't know what I will do with piano, or if I will study it at uni, or whether I even want to. I just want to figure this out eventually. I do really enjoy piano accompaniment though. I actually love accompanying people for some weird reason. I love that feeling of making music with someone else, of leading someone or having someone lead me into the music, of keeping the background rhythm whilst a vocalist does her thing. How you're not alone on stage vulnerable in front of the audience, but it's almost the opposite...when I'm with someone else, I enter a world with them and I can block out everyone outside in the audience. We do out own thing and ignore the audience, whereas I can rarely do that with a solo. I always play my best when I am accompanying someone else. I think the thing I most love about piano accompaniment is that sense of awareness...it's hard to explain, but soon enough, after a certain amount of recordings listened to or rehearsals, you kind of subconsciously blend with the soloist. Your brain automatically picks up on their signals, knows when they are coming in, until you can even tell what type of emotion they are trying to portray. You are aware of them somewhere in the back of your mind, and yet wholly unaware of anything at all in the forefront of your mind, and your own playing just somehow blends in with theirs by its own. This is so much bull I don't even understand what I'm writing, it's hard to explain.
Piano is my personal thing. What I make of it is up to me. I still don't understand it yet. I still don't feel that connection I felt when I was 11 and the most upset I'd ever been in my life. According to C, we often play more beautifully when we are especially sad or happy. That's why it became my outlet when I was 11 and that's when I enjoyed it most, and after that things were just numb and I was neither sad nor happy and so my playing came out sounding dull, too. The more life experiences we have, the more we come to appreciate piano playing and the more we can connect with the instrument emotionally. All those composers I played...Schubert, Chopin, Liszt, Schumann..I could go on...all of them had tragic experiences. According to C, Chopin only ever composed for piano, and it was like his 'blankie' because he never left it his entire life. It was his outlet after his family was murdered and he fled as a refugee to Paris. Hard to imagine, yet he can compose the most beautiful and heart-wrenching melodies. I tried to picture Chopin's family dead when I performed that nocturne, but it's hard, because I'm still a teenager and nothing that tragic has happened to me yet. Apparently if I leave some of these pieces for now and come back to them in say 10 years time, I perceive them differently and gain new appreciation for them (incidentally my piano teacher also said the exact same thing as C: just as you perceive a book differently when you read it 10 years later, so do you perceive the music). That's what B my cellist said, too (and she was an incredible cellist, gave me goosebumps even when I was playing with her). She's auditioning for the sydney symphony and I guarantee you one day she will be principal cellist in that orchestra. It's incredible, because she got into the con and has done her masters and has got all her diplomas, yet she only started cello when she was 13!
No one can tell me I suck, or that I am shocking, or that I play with no emotion. If I wasn't nervous, then I would be able to connect with the music. F anyone who judges my playing, unless they can get up there and show me how it's 'meant' to be done. I worked hard to get to where I am with piano, and even if someone else in the audience has done so too, so what? That's their journey. On stage I can spill out and express the finished product of all the suffering. That is the answer to getting rid of performance anxiety, and that's what I did on the last day of school. Not a single drop of nervous sweat. I even hugged Rh afterwards and was all smiles in front of everyone on stage. I'm proud of myself, because a year ago, under Ms B, I would never even have agreed to perform in front of the whole school. And back in year 7, when my piano teacher terrorised me every lesson, my hands would have been shaking. It's been good for me, a learning experience, and it's a shame it took me my last performance before I could understand performance anxiety to the fullest.
The funniest thing? All the other music teachers were so relieved when they knew Ms B was leaving, you could tell. Mr L, for once, actually didn't take forever to get a sentence out when asked questions about assessments (previously feared he'd give us the wrong info, because he did that once and Ms B gave it to him big time). Ms V and Ms F were actually all of a sudden 3 x nicer to me (they would've heard about me not wanting Ms B as my teacher, as the day after I complained Ms H interviewed the entire music department and even Mr L told me 'something big was getting sorted out', when he normally wouldn't have dared).
They say what doesn't kill you makes you stronger. And I think the experience with Ms B certainly made me stronger. Because there are psychopaths out there in the world and in the workforce, and I'm only grateful I came across one and now know what to look out for. Better I had this experience in high school, where the student always has the ultimate power to complain, than at a workforce with a psychopath as my boss and no one to help me. And then I start to think, is it really Ms B's fault? This is when I'm in danger of getting philosophical and saying 1000 more words about the topic at hand. Are people born psychopaths, or are psychopathic tendencies developed? Is Ms B to blame? Is it just because she doesn't have kids, and can't think to herself (because she is my mum's exact age), 'How would I feel if a teacher treated my daughter this way?'. It's confusing. I don't hate her exactly, because she never hated me. And all the stuff she did to me, what if she couldn't help it? She has school-hopped enough times now for me to know that she never, ever acknowledges herself as being in the wrong. Sometimes I almost feel pity, because what childhood must she have had, when no other teacher has made me bawl my eyes out at school? Is she just going to live the rest of her life with her crazy carbon-tax-doesn't-exist husband, and just be this way for like the next 50 years? What I mainly wish I knew is whether no one is in the blame here, if I have the right to hate her. The frustrating nature vs nurture that I won't go into.
I'm betting my next post will be about my piano teacher or something, super-influential life figure number 2. I can bullshit so much about life.
The day we found out she left (via girls' parents who heard it at a PA meeting), the yr 12's all were so happy. The fact that I was the only year 12 she taught and yet everyone in music 1 hated her, just goes to show that this is not a normal teacher who people merely disliked. The yr 11's were even more happy (because they would have been stuck with her next year). I'm happy for yr 11 violinist (though I don't think violinists would really be on Ms B's victim list, it was more the pianists). After all, the yr 11 girl has serious potential (encore nominee I'm betting), and Ms B would need to have the occasional 'musical genius' to exploit so she could say 'lookie here, our school is good at music'. She just always made sure she never 'nurtured' the pianists. Believe me, when I first came to the school I thought everyone sucked at piano, because I'd never really heard anyone in the lower year groups play anything good for like a whole year. Until I eventually heard some of them play (during the one music festival you could audition for voluntarily) and a few of them were actually quite good. At a regular school they too would have performed at school concerts and such, but because of Ms B's issues, she could never bring herself to acknowledge that there were talented pianists in yr 11 and 10 who did not get the opportunity to perform as they would have if they had been at a school with a good music department. I was the only exception, because technically she was my music extension teacher. When I performed, it looked good for her, because I was her 'student', and especially when I performed the ensemble piece at the big school concert, it looked like she had 'helped us rehearse' even though she had only been present at one rehearsal.
There was a reason why she never let any of us pianists perform solos, and at first when Rh brought up the 'insecure jealousy' thing, I thought 'yeah right' and actually thought she was crazy. Until I realised, and it made me feel better. I was never the type to ever get egotistical about piano, because of my own piano teacher and her strict ways (it is very hard to be egotistical when you have for years been compared every week to other students who are always better than you). Funnily enough, it was my own piano teacher who confirmed Rh's theory. Ms B was jealous. Of me, of my piano teacher's abilities, of Ms V's, and she was insecure about how the talented junior pianists would turn out by the time they got around to doing HSC music extension. I say this in the least egotistical way possible, but it is the truth. And as soon as Rh and my piano teacher helped me realise this, I no longer was affected as much by the negativity, or thought of my playing and hours and hours and hours of practice as futile and a failure. Then the performance anxiety would almost completely disappear, because Ms B had previously succeeded in making her own insecurities mine. And when you just get up on that stage, confident, knowing that you have done hours of practice, knowing that no one else has the right to judge, and your mind isn't full of Ms B's negativity, then the sweaty hands and dry mouth pretty much disappear. Ironically, my confidence as a performer also developed thanks to Ms B. It took the realisation of why Ms B loved hurting me intentionally, and it took me seeing it as a compliment that Ms B felt threatened by me and my piano teacher, to get rid of the performance anxiety. By the time of my last performance in front of the entire school, Ms B was no longer teaching me and my piano teacher, too, was no longer teaching me (though it had been a couple of years since my piano teacher had last made me feel like a failure, and my piano teacher was only doing this to get me to practise, not because she was a psychopath). Getting rid of the negativity and self-doubt these external forces could inflict upon me, and realising that Ms B and my piano teacher don't deserve my respect. I don't admire their ways of teaching, I don't admire them as people. Their opinions used to mean everything to me (in terms of my playing). I believed every word, and now I realise just because they are teachers, doesn't mean they were correct or deserved my respect. C deserves my respect. C proves her knowledge, doesn't pretend to know what she doesn't know. C tells me what I'm doing wrong and gives me creative ideas to fix it. The best thing about C? She always knew how much practice I did. Because no matter how many compliments or constructive criticisms C gave me, she would acknowledge those hours of practice regardless. Most importantly, C gave me a reason to keep playing, have the motivation to practise when my whole life I've had this whole huge struggle with this thing I am most insecure about, always doubting myself about. I never had the passion, I've always thought. Never was a musical genius, never enjoyed practising. According to C, there is no such thing as musical talent. You are born with genes that determine where your future passions may lie. And talent is basically what you make of the things you are passionate at. And C made a good point. Things like procrastination, she said no matter how much you make your brain do something, as long as your subconscious mind gives your conscious mind a reason not to do it, then your brain won't do it, and it's all about getting to the heart of why you inevitably will do/won't do something. And just like with procrastination, C reckons that if I wasn't passionate about piano, I would have quit long ago like all those other kids. That somehow, my subconscious mind would have given my conscious mind a strong enough reason to discontinue, to the point where no matter how much a parent pushes their child, the child will inevitably quit. Just like no matter how much I try and stop procrastinating, I inevitably procrastinate. What I'm still trying to figure out is how my subconscious mind is passionate about music and piano, even though my conscious mind denies this and blocks it out. C thinks it would be a shame if I didn't do it at uni. Maybe I can do it after all without feeling like an idiot amidst super-passionate musicians. She even thinks I have really unusually soft pianissimos which are a sign that someone is really musical. Really musical. I'd like to think she wasn't just saying it to make me feel better the day before my exam, but she isn't that type anyway, she's honest. I think 'musical' is what every musician wants to be labelled as. It's the highest compliment, I think. Not 'talented', not 'oh wow your hands can move so fast', not 'skilled' or 'proficient' or 'highly advanced', but 'musical', and I never expected someone to ever think of me in that way. 'Musical' is the best compliment anyone has ever given to me. It took awhile of coaxing (because I always find it awkward to play emotionally in front of people I know I'll see again. In front of examiners, I give it my most heart-wrenching performance haha because I know I'll never have to see them again). But B my cellist and C and even the violinist who I still don't know the name of, encouraged me to repeat the opening of that piano trio over and over until I could picture a funeral procession in my head. I then played that piece without picturing anything. Blankness. I wish I could say I felt the sadness of the music, but my head was like in another stratosphere. I wasn't thinking anything, but at the same time I was highly aware of the balance between the piano, the cello and the violin. And after that, C told me it was the best I'd ever played. That it made her think of her best friend at music college in London who'd died in a car crash when she was still young, and it made her feel all the anger and frustration, but all the beauty and passion too. I think that's the most amazing thing anyone has ever told me (heck that almost made me cry). B said she could really feel me feeling the music too, and that I was aware of both her and the violinist playing, even when I told them my mind was just blank. Then B my cellist thought maybe I felt emotions abstractly or something. Too confusing too go into.
And to this day I still can't say whether I truly enjoy piano, even though I've done it for 13 years. It's a bit like a cross between brushing my teeth, going jogging for 30 minutes, and doing the laundry (this doesn't make sense even to me). But at the same time, brushing your teeth, though so routine-like, makes you feel clean. Doing the laundry, stupidly enough, makes me feel like I've accomplished something, that satisfaction of completing a piece of menial housework. Going jogging releases endorphins and you feel like you've just done something good for your body, even when you're exhausted. A combination of that all that is what piano is like to me. Mental exhaustion coupled with occasional flashes of clarity when you play something nicely and then sudden surges of motivation and satisfaction when you get those certain hours completed, then back to mental exhaustion until it becomes daily routine. I can't imagine quitting it, though I don't even enjoy it either. But it's weird, like an old habit I have to keep. As soon as my HSC was done and over with, the first thing I did when I got home was choose some Lmus pieces to learn (just so I could maintain finger dexterity, I told myself, and improve sightreading). I don't know what I will do with piano, or if I will study it at uni, or whether I even want to. I just want to figure this out eventually. I do really enjoy piano accompaniment though. I actually love accompanying people for some weird reason. I love that feeling of making music with someone else, of leading someone or having someone lead me into the music, of keeping the background rhythm whilst a vocalist does her thing. How you're not alone on stage vulnerable in front of the audience, but it's almost the opposite...when I'm with someone else, I enter a world with them and I can block out everyone outside in the audience. We do out own thing and ignore the audience, whereas I can rarely do that with a solo. I always play my best when I am accompanying someone else. I think the thing I most love about piano accompaniment is that sense of awareness...it's hard to explain, but soon enough, after a certain amount of recordings listened to or rehearsals, you kind of subconsciously blend with the soloist. Your brain automatically picks up on their signals, knows when they are coming in, until you can even tell what type of emotion they are trying to portray. You are aware of them somewhere in the back of your mind, and yet wholly unaware of anything at all in the forefront of your mind, and your own playing just somehow blends in with theirs by its own. This is so much bull I don't even understand what I'm writing, it's hard to explain.
Piano is my personal thing. What I make of it is up to me. I still don't understand it yet. I still don't feel that connection I felt when I was 11 and the most upset I'd ever been in my life. According to C, we often play more beautifully when we are especially sad or happy. That's why it became my outlet when I was 11 and that's when I enjoyed it most, and after that things were just numb and I was neither sad nor happy and so my playing came out sounding dull, too. The more life experiences we have, the more we come to appreciate piano playing and the more we can connect with the instrument emotionally. All those composers I played...Schubert, Chopin, Liszt, Schumann..I could go on...all of them had tragic experiences. According to C, Chopin only ever composed for piano, and it was like his 'blankie' because he never left it his entire life. It was his outlet after his family was murdered and he fled as a refugee to Paris. Hard to imagine, yet he can compose the most beautiful and heart-wrenching melodies. I tried to picture Chopin's family dead when I performed that nocturne, but it's hard, because I'm still a teenager and nothing that tragic has happened to me yet. Apparently if I leave some of these pieces for now and come back to them in say 10 years time, I perceive them differently and gain new appreciation for them (incidentally my piano teacher also said the exact same thing as C: just as you perceive a book differently when you read it 10 years later, so do you perceive the music). That's what B my cellist said, too (and she was an incredible cellist, gave me goosebumps even when I was playing with her). She's auditioning for the sydney symphony and I guarantee you one day she will be principal cellist in that orchestra. It's incredible, because she got into the con and has done her masters and has got all her diplomas, yet she only started cello when she was 13!
No one can tell me I suck, or that I am shocking, or that I play with no emotion. If I wasn't nervous, then I would be able to connect with the music. F anyone who judges my playing, unless they can get up there and show me how it's 'meant' to be done. I worked hard to get to where I am with piano, and even if someone else in the audience has done so too, so what? That's their journey. On stage I can spill out and express the finished product of all the suffering. That is the answer to getting rid of performance anxiety, and that's what I did on the last day of school. Not a single drop of nervous sweat. I even hugged Rh afterwards and was all smiles in front of everyone on stage. I'm proud of myself, because a year ago, under Ms B, I would never even have agreed to perform in front of the whole school. And back in year 7, when my piano teacher terrorised me every lesson, my hands would have been shaking. It's been good for me, a learning experience, and it's a shame it took me my last performance before I could understand performance anxiety to the fullest.
The funniest thing? All the other music teachers were so relieved when they knew Ms B was leaving, you could tell. Mr L, for once, actually didn't take forever to get a sentence out when asked questions about assessments (previously feared he'd give us the wrong info, because he did that once and Ms B gave it to him big time). Ms V and Ms F were actually all of a sudden 3 x nicer to me (they would've heard about me not wanting Ms B as my teacher, as the day after I complained Ms H interviewed the entire music department and even Mr L told me 'something big was getting sorted out', when he normally wouldn't have dared).
They say what doesn't kill you makes you stronger. And I think the experience with Ms B certainly made me stronger. Because there are psychopaths out there in the world and in the workforce, and I'm only grateful I came across one and now know what to look out for. Better I had this experience in high school, where the student always has the ultimate power to complain, than at a workforce with a psychopath as my boss and no one to help me. And then I start to think, is it really Ms B's fault? This is when I'm in danger of getting philosophical and saying 1000 more words about the topic at hand. Are people born psychopaths, or are psychopathic tendencies developed? Is Ms B to blame? Is it just because she doesn't have kids, and can't think to herself (because she is my mum's exact age), 'How would I feel if a teacher treated my daughter this way?'. It's confusing. I don't hate her exactly, because she never hated me. And all the stuff she did to me, what if she couldn't help it? She has school-hopped enough times now for me to know that she never, ever acknowledges herself as being in the wrong. Sometimes I almost feel pity, because what childhood must she have had, when no other teacher has made me bawl my eyes out at school? Is she just going to live the rest of her life with her crazy carbon-tax-doesn't-exist husband, and just be this way for like the next 50 years? What I mainly wish I knew is whether no one is in the blame here, if I have the right to hate her. The frustrating nature vs nurture that I won't go into.
I'm betting my next post will be about my piano teacher or something, super-influential life figure number 2. I can bullshit so much about life.
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