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?

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.

‘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.

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.

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.

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

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.

Ms B :)

Funny, because she always signed her emails with 'Ms B :)' Only met 1 person who ever liked her, she graduated last year. Everyone else would go, 'Oh you poor thing I can't believe you have Ms B', or 'OMG Ms B is SO scary' or 'OMG everyone HATES her, don't worry'.

Let's start off this post, future J in 5 year's time, with a bit of a refresher with this email that K helped me write (salvaged from my school email sent box, before my school email account gets deleted). Obviously I'm not posting my teachers' names all over the internet (could come back to haunt me), so will put the first initial instead.

-K, who helped me write it, is my genius music tutor who I'd be lost without. Almost wrote half my composition for me practically. Was on full music scholarship to musically prestigious private school. Went to the best music conservatory in the nation. Did a couple more music degrees at fancy French conservatoires. Came 1st in the state for Music 2 and extension when she was only in year 11 doing HSC accelerated. Composition got performed at the Opera House. Trained to become a concert pianist. Returned to teach at old high school my principal came from, so they were good friends or something.

-Dr H was my school principal.

-Ms H was the director of studies (who had awkwardly enough also interviewed me for my scholarship, and had also caught me out on numerous occasions doing things I wasn't meant to be doing). She was really distant and appears strict on the surface at first so some people didn't like her, but in reality Ms H was actually nice and by the end of school I actually liked her. I just think she appears strict because as director of studies, you'd have to be pretty good at scaring people into handing their assessments in and stuff.

-Mr L was my music 2 teacher, and I didn't like him much (see previous blog post), although at the time of the email we were on good terms with each other. He was not a mean person at all, just frustrating and ignorant to deal with. One of those people who are doing their doctorate but still totally absent-minded. I could never figure out if he was a genius or a total idiot. Would never, ever give me feedback on my playing during lesson times (partly because he was a trumpet player). But as a teacher (who marked my recitals!) he was still supposed to. If he was 'capable' of marking my performance assessments, he too should have been capable of giving me feedback during lessons. I suspect he was too scared of Ms B to say anything about my playing, in the event that Ms B disagreed with whatever he said.

-Ms V, another music teacher. Never got taught by her, but she used to be the choir teacher so I knew her. Her VET girls always complained about how lazy she was and apparently she was not a good teacher, although some people really liked her. I liked her relatively well because she wasn't evil and made it obvious she didn't like Ms B (all the teachers hated her). She was also super nice to me before a performance. Right after Ms B put me down say an hour beforehand, Ms V would tell me I was 'sounding good' (she didn't know Ms B always said the opposite, because Ms B always did it with us alone in the room). Sometimes made me feel better, and she was an amazing accompanist who was way better than Ms B. I suspect Ms B was a bit jealous of her piano skills, as Ms B had done a music education degree at the con (which really isn't that much of a prestigious degree, and not hard to get into), whereas Ms V had done an actual performance degree at the con and was way younger.

-Ms F, who I really didn't know that well at all. Just another music teacher, but everyone seemed to like her and she was the only one of them who has been at this school awhile. Was not a pianist but was still allowed to mark me for my assessment, filling in for Ms B who was no longer allowed to mark us after a parent complained about her.


Dear Dr H,

I have been really worried about my Music 2/Extension courses and I have written an email to Ms. H but I am concerned that if I send it there will be negative ramifications for my interactions with the music department and thus my assessments. I don't know what to do. Can you have a look at the below email and please advise me with who I should talk to?

Regards,
J
Yr 12

Dear Ms. H,

I am writing to you because I need some clarification regarding my HSC Music 2/Extension Courses. There have been confusing and conflicting messages from different staff members of the music department regarding my assessment tasks.
I really want to use the assessments as learning tools so that I can improve upon my mistakes and work towards a better result for the final exam. I also get private tutoring for my music studies both in performance and musicology and both my teachers would find it very useful to have some feedback regarding these assessments.

The first issue is regarding my written exam that was held during the assessment block last term. 

I have received my mark, however I have been told that it is music department policy not to return the actual paper so I have not even had the chance to go through the entire paper to see where I lost marks. I have also been told by the music staff that the Language department also does not return written papers, however I am confused as I have seen language students receive their written papers. This means that I do not know which areas I lost marks in and how I may further improve. It doesn't seem very logical that the music department would withhold an internal exam. My musicology tutor is the head of music curriculum at another school and she is also unable to understand the rationale behind this. 

I am the only Music 2 student and despite my teacher’s best efforts, it is difficult enough as it is for me to improve or learn when I am in the same class with students who are all doing another course with different requirements. It is hard to gauge my progress without any comparable classmates, so I really rely on in depth feedback regarding my assessments. 

The second issue is concerning my practical exam this term. I performed on the piano three pieces. My Music 2 teacher Mr. L and another teacher Ms F marked my practical exam, however I also received verbal feedback from the head of department, Ms B, who is my extension teacher.
The Head of department informed me that my first piece for extension was 'shocking' and that I 'didn't do well at all' overall. In particular she claimed that 'both markers commented on misuse of the soft pedal'. However none of the written feedback I received indicated that this was a problem and when I discussed this with one of my markers he didn't know what I was talking about. I performed this piece for my AMusA last year, which I successfully achieved, and my Amus examiners also commented on the written report that 'the pedalling was effective'. My classroom teacher stated that this might be an issue of different marking criteria between the Board of Studies and AMEB. However I have looked at the marking criteria and I do not see the rationale for a 'shocking' assessment vs. a successful completion of a diploma level AMEB exam. I have also discussed this with the head of department, and she suggested my diploma examiners may have been 'too busy writing comments' to notice problems with my playing, and also that regardless of the repertoire being played, I should never use the soft pedal for the entire duration of a piece. She has also made other comments that my musicology tutor (who trained as a concert pianist) disagrees with. This has caused a great deal of stressful confusion for me. My piano teacher is also at a loss as to why my extension teacher has made these comments particularly regarding the soft pedal use. She has had another student several years ago play the exact same piece with the soft pedal, and this particular student received full marks for extension and was selected by the Board of Studies to perform the piece for Encore at the opera house.

The difference between marking criteria is understandable however I am left in an extremely distressed state because I do not know what to do to resolve or improve my performance. I asked the music department if it was possible to record my practical assessment as this seemed to me a good way to objectively watch my performance and understand the feedback that my examiners are giving to me. This is particularly pertinent when I am faced with the dilemma of receiving written feedback that is either extremely vague or directly contradicts the musical score markings and the directions of my piano teacher. I understand that the classroom teachers are expert professionals in developing students for the HSC exam, however I am the only Music 2 student and both examiners are non-specialists on the piano (as I was informed by the head of department). In addition there was a written comment criticising my use of the soft pedal in one of my Music 2 pieces, which I feel is inaccurate, as I have not been taught to use the soft pedal for this particular piece, so I would never have used it during the performance. When I asked my class teacher why the comment was made and by whom it was made, I was told that the comments were a combination of both markers’ observations and that it was against the music department’s policy to reveal details regarding which of the two markers made specific comments. I am therefore unable to ask for further clarification and detail on the comments made. The point being is that when I asked if we could video record the practical sessions in order to clarify pedalling discrepancies and have a better understanding of how I performed, I was told that this was against school/music department policy. Again I do not see the logic in this and I am trying very hard to engage with my own learning and study, but when faced with strongly negative verbal feedback and vague written feedback that is contradictory and unhelpful, I do not see what I can do.

In general the feedback that has been given regarding my music 2/extension studies has been very inconsistent and the negative nature is really daunting, particularly when there are big stretches of no feedback whatsoever during lessons and then a sudden mass of negative feedback from my extension teacher a couple of days or sometimes even hours before I am due to perform for an assessment, which increases my stress/anxiety level during a performance. Although my Music 2 teacher Mr L has been extremely helpful in discussing with me some of my extension problems, I do understand that ultimately he is unable to fully advise me, as it is Ms B that is my extension teacher. Yet I do not feel particularly supported as I find the harsh, alarming choice of wording in my extension teacher’s verbal feedback to be discouraging and un-motivational. Quite frankly I feel that to be told my performance was ‘shocking’ and that I ‘didn’t do well at all’ without substantial reasoning or useful advice on how to improve is damaging to my performance skills and distressful. My piano teacher is also concerned that it is negatively affecting my confidence as a performer. As such I am uncomfortable with approaching the head of music and am reluctant to discuss such issues with her.

Therefore I hope that you can help me resolve my concerns regarding the assessment procedures so that I can work towards a better result in the final exam. I also hope that by voicing my concerns I have not negatively impacted my future assessments and interactions with the music department.

The next day, the principal replies at 7am with something like, 'Don't lose heart we'll sort this out'.
The next week, I go see Ms H and Dr H, and they immediately agree on getting me a new teacher.
A month later, I meet the best high school music teacher in the country from principal's old school.
Days after that, the school is paying for me to get taught by the most amazing inspirational teacher I have ever met.


Ms B was scary indeed. Where to start? I had so much faith in her at the beginning. I listened to everything she told me, because she seemed like she actually cared at first. I thought to myself, I'll do everything this woman tells me to do, because why would my own teacher want to hurt me? She ended up ruining me and my perception of piano when my relationship with it was already fragile and scarred from my own crazy piano teacher. She knew my weakness: my feelings about my own piano teacher. She made me doubt my own piano teacher more, then my piano teacher on the following Sunday would make me doubt Ms B, then it would continue in a vicious cycle to and fro, until I no longer trusted both teachers. The coldest person ever. Even though she's all smiles, and 'Hi darlings', you can never talk to her properly about anything without feeling less than her, or like she holds absolute power and authority, because she is likely to snap at you any moment. Eyes that bug out, looks like a tall anorexic version of Cruella de Ville with a fringe and really long straight light brown-blonde hair she always wore out. Same age as my mum (48 ish?) No kids.

Did the same thing to her fellow colleagues too, in bullying them. Rh once walked in on Ms B telling off Mr L, she was towering over him and he was sitting in a chair looking stressed out. Ms B randomly pats Ms V on the shoulder condescendingly sometimes when she accompanies. I had never come across a teacher as manipulative and cunning as she was. She's the type of person who always makes you rethink the true meaning of her words. Played mind games with her all the time. Sick of it. Never experienced a teacher like this before .They were either outright bitchy, or outright nice, or in between. She's one of the rare ones that can't be categorised.

-She was the music co-ordinator and ex music extension teacher. Leaving at the end of the year, partially thanks to me I think (not that her leaving after my graduation does me much good). So much shit went down with her.

-Came to the school in yr 10. Other than the more important issues outlined in the email, here are some more -

-First time she heard me play in yr 11, told me the rhythm was entirely wrong and said all-negative things to me THE DAY BEFORE a performance assessment. Made me panic so so much, I then went to her at recess and asked to change my piece for the recital. Her answer? 'Absolutely not, we cannot condone this'. Said it in this really disapproving tone of voice.

-When she became my music ext teacher, told me that she always talked about me with her mum, and that her mum didn't approve of my piano lesson times. I DIDN'T FUCKING CARE what her mum thought.

-Wore a racy backless dress when she was conducting the school orchestra, so hence her back was turned to the entire audience of parents, some of whom complained about it after the K-12 concert.

-Criticised Ms F's piano accompaniment at the concert (although she was pretty awful herself). When she turns her back, everyone sees Ms F give Ms B the finger. THE FINGER, IN FRONT OF ALL THE STUDENTS.

-In reality, has really bad self-esteem. During the K-12 concert made really big mistakes in the CHOIR accompaniment on both nights, was really obvious. But she still acts like she's the shit to cover this up. This is why she almost always makes Ms V accompany instead, because Ms V is amazing at piano accompaniment.

-Yelled at a girl in the Music 1 class, E, whose mum turned out to be head of parent's association. Mum rang up Dr H and pretty much put a restraining order against Ms B. From that day onwards, Ms B wasn't allowed to assess us.

-Yelled at Rh for missing choir, telling her to 'wake up'. Rh's mum got furious, rang up Ms B.

-Y in Music 1 class complained about her to Ms H like crazy.

-Dr H was already keeping an eye on her because countless parents had already complained.

-Never ever taught me anything during Music class, until the DAY OF the performance, when she would walk into the room, demand to hear everything, then tell me all that was wrong 2 hours before I'd be due to perform. The rest of the time, she would not give me a single piece of advice or comment, whether positive or negative, on my playing. I was simply to go practise in a practice room.

-In yr 11 final prelim exam, Ms B forgot to order us the yr 11 Music 2 exam, or it hadn't arrived yet. She intentionally stood in the room and watched the exam supervisor hand out Trial HSC exams instead. My eyes almost bugged out of my head when I saw the HSC essay question that we had never learnt the content for, as we were still in Prelim. I was too scared to say anything, and so were the other 2 girls (well they were going to drop down to Music 1 anyway so didn't care). Next lesson, I bring it up with Mr L. He admits he was aware of it and apologises for it. A week later another girl's dad does say something, and we get interviewed by Ms H. Because it is pretty serious, giving a class the wrong exam on purpose. Ms B denies it was wrong, claimed that we 'should be prepared for anything' and that it as 'good practise for HSC', then proceeded to mark all of us super-easy so the other girl would stop complaining. Refuses to apologise to us, then bitches about Mr L in front of us after she asks us what Mr L has told us, and I told her Mr L apologised to us. Proceeds to say, 'I don't understand why he'd do that! There's nothing to apologise for!' with a disgusted facial expression.

-Told me to bluff my way through a HSC assessment 2 hours before the performance, because 'both examiners didn't specialise in piano' and wouldn't notice my 'wrong rhythm'. When said 'wrong rhythm' had never been brought to my attention prior to that day.

-Husband was equally crazy. In Advanced, G once told me that when debating with girls from Ms B's old school, they told her that Ms B had been fired and someone had sprayed 'F U MS B' over a locker door. And also that upon sending an email to her husband to fix a computer (because he was the IT guy at Ms B's old school), he replied with information about how climate change doesn't exist.

-Ensemble piece. Oh God. Let's see. Coerced me into using yr 11 violinist on music scholarship (poor thing gets slave-used by everyone for every music thing there is). She told me it would be good practise for the year 11 girl's own HSC next year (cool, so she gets to play around with my HSC to get a feel for it first)! When I wanted to hire professionals, she dissed my piano teacher's idea and insisted on yr 11 violinist. That was ridiculous. I wasn't asking the school to pay for the professionals! I would be paying out of my own pocket, and she still had good reason to say 'I strongly don't encourage...' Of course, she couldn't outright say no (it was my HSC not hers, and most people used professionals unless they went to a school that was really good at music and had capable student musicians), but I didn't want to piss her off, because she would be the one marking all my assessments (at that point I had no idea internals counted for nothing. Wish I did, would've made life a lot easier if I'd said no from the start). Made me hire the school cello teacher, too. Never told me I had to pay $80 an hour for him, until about 5 rehearsals later when she sneakily made Mr L give me a permission slip outlining the cost. Cellist later tells me he will be away right before trials, and he had told Ms B and he hoped that was ok with me. Well, it wasn't. And Ms B later played dumb after I complained to Ms H. When Ms H asked her about ensemble issue, she claimed she knew nothing about it. She then tells Ms H of her 'concerns' that it may not be fair on the yr 11 violinist as she has already spent so much time rehearsing with me. Who's fault was that, and how does that make sense? If she continued playing for my HSC, wouldn't she be wasting even more time? As Rh said, IT'S MY FRIKKIN HSC WE'RE TALKING ABOUT HERE, and no one else matters. I later gave violinist a $100 gift card anyway for all the rehearsals we'd done and the 'waste of time', just because I knew she suffered too much under Ms B. But I refused to let a yr 11 girl play for my HSC, especially when she had prelims to worry about at the time and was already in a shitload of orchestras, ensembles! Even though this year 11 girl was really talented (in retrospect, even when I compare her to the professional violinists I used after her, she had lovely tone). But a year 11 girl is just that, a year 11 girl who doesn't care. Don't get me wrong, she was nice enough and as I said, knew what she was doing, but in the end if I were in her position and I was getting forced to show up to school at 7:30 every week to rehearse with random yr 12 girl without getting paid for it when prelims are around the corner, it wouldn't be on my top list of priorities either. When I hinted this to Mr L, he said something like 'musicians like this girl do it for the music, it's their life'. Well, no matter how talented she is or enjoys 'playing the music', in the end she has priorities too. I could freaking have said in yr 11 that I enjoyed sleeping in as much as she enjoyed playing music. Does that mean I should/would sleep in during Prelims? So logically, she would not have been able to put her best effort into my ensemble piece, and I certainly do not blame her. There's always that reassurance you get when you pay someone to do something for you, in that you know they will take it seriously (especially if it was someone my piano teacher would recommend). It was funny because my piano teacher was like, 'you tell that bitch I will no longer be your teacher if you use that year 11 girl as your violinist'. Which was quite melodramatic, because year 11 girl was really not that bad, and piano teacher screwed up my ensemble big time, too, by making me request exam dates with the BOS TWICE in order to accommodate the violinist's concert schedule (not a good idea, because we all know you accommodate the BOS, not the other way round) . Might make another post on my piano teacher sometime, because of all the issues I had with her. By the time my HSC rolled around, the BOS totally ignored my exam request date, as we had left it too late (I didn't get rid of violin girl until I emailed the principal, because I was too scared to tell Ms B face to face) and we had already requested different dates twice (because the first time had been Ms B requesting a date that yr 11 girl would be available, and then when I managed to get rid of Ms B and changed to the other violinist, we had to re-submit the dates that he would be available). I had had 3 different cellists and 3 different violinists, and had just gotten a new one 2 weeks before the exam because my usual violinist after the yr 11 girl had gone to a competition in Italy and the BOS ignored the request for my exam to be held earlier. New last minute violinist (who C magically found for me) stuffed up during the HSC a bit, which put me off a bit too during the performance. She squeaked big time, was out of tune sometimes and that caused me to make a few very noticeable mistakes. But not her fault, she had only had 2 rehearsals with us with 2 weeks notice to prepare everything. So I probably should have kept using yr 11 girl, but as I said, it's morally wrong too, to make someone do that when you know they have no choice and are only doing it because they are scared of Ms B. However, even the school cello teacher who Ms B made me use wasn't that good. He was taught HSC music by Ms B at her old school when he was in year 12 (he only graduated a few years ago, and I doubt he was that qualified). I could immediately tell the difference between his playing and a professional's (and I was meant to pay him!) whereas at least the violin girl was decent and cost nothing.  In the end both Ms B and piano teacher stuffed me up big time, Ms B because she made me use yr 11 girl and piano teacher because she was so against the girl playing for me (when she was not that bad), and because she said to me, 'Don't worry the BOS will give you the dates you want, the AMEB always does'. Pretty idiotic. Comparing the sadistic BOS to a private music examination board who would want to please the parents that pay exam enrolment fees. The AMEB are at the mercy of parents who pay fees. The BOS, on they other hand, wouldn't have a reason to give a shit about our exams. You helplessly regurgitate the belonging-themed bullshit they ask you to, you don't make your demands on them. Ms B claimed the poor girl had no choice but to play for me because it was a 'Christian school' so we 'helped each other out', especially as she was a 'music scholar'. Ms B also kept reminding me that 'it is your ensemble, you need to know what you are doing and what your instrumentalists are doing' Well, why do I need a teacher then, hmmm? That's like saying I should know how to do fucking calculus before learning it. Not to mention she never supervised any rehearsal beyond the 1st.

-At the K-12 concert, told my violinist to stand rather than sit, as she was 'performing'. Excuse me? Not a single youtube video shows a piano trio being performed with the violinist standing.It is not, after all, a violin solo with piano and cello accompaniment. Either she had no idea what she was talking about, or she couldn't stand the thought of me playing something other than an accompaniment, so tried to make the violinist stand so it looked like she was doing a solo. Even the cellist looked a bit irritated, and then politely suggested the violinist sit, though Ms B was a bit put off by that. 

-Gave me a difficult time last year when I asked for permission to do music ext. Made a big fuss about what a high standard you have to be at. Then proceeded to tell me, on the very day of the recital that determined whether I'd be able to do ext or not, that if I made a noticeable mistake I'd be down to D range! On the day of my recital. Seeing a pattern here? Out to get me, obviously. Even my old piano teacher would never do that on the day of an exam and try to sabotage me intentionally (because a sane person would have no reason to do so). Rh's explanation? Ms B hated me and all the other pianists in the school because she was jealous and insecure of her own playing. Almost made sense to me, in fact. Either that or she was just jealous of my piano teacher. Piano teacher agreed with me. Anyway, Ms B claimed I couldn't do extension unless I got 18/20 for that recital. She ended up giving me exactly 18/20, because she knew there'd be hell to pay. Unbeknownst to her, I'd just recently played the same piece at my diploma exam and passed. So she's lucky she gave me at least 18, because if she hadn't, I'd have the diploma exam report as proof. And they say to do Music ext you need to be 7th grade standard. Fuck, I was a grade and a diploma beyond that. We can safely say she was making me doubt myself on purpose.

-Weird and psychotic. Once had me and a 20 y o male student teacher in her office. Took one look at the last name of my piece's composer, which happened to be 'Hiscocks'. Her reaction? "Hisssss...Cocks......unfortunate name". Me and male student teacher glance at her awkwardly. Not the situation/time to be pointing out sexual innuendos.

-Lost composition portfolio – I'm discussing it with Mr L, then she pops up out of nowhere: ‘What’s the matter here? If you’ve lost your portfolio the school can’t do anything about it, you’d better find it!’ Took pleasure in saying this when I was already crazy upset, especially as it was during the music concert rehearsal. I took one look at Rh next to me. When Ms B turns to stalk away, Rh and I discuss her bitchiness, obviously. Then Rh points subtly, and tells me to look towards the doorway. There, leaning against the door whilst the rehearsal is carrying on around us, is Ms B positively GLARING at us subtly. 30 mins later, she comes to her senses and realises a normal person would not have said that to me, so she comes back to me and puts on the all-nice 'Don't worry I'm sure you'll find it' act.

-Several times, she wouldn't be present for my ext lessons. I'd wander around the music building trying to find her. When I couldn't I'd just start practising by myself, as usual (this was what I'd do with her there, anyway). The next lesson, she'd disapprovingly tell me she marked me absent and she couldn't find me, and that I should ALWAYS find her before practising. Not after 15 minutes of looking for you, I won't. Not my fault if you can't be punctual to class.

-Kicked me out of orchestra in the most awkward way possible. I told her we were getting an assessment notification in history and I didn't want to miss the instructions, so couldn't come to half of orchestra rehearsal. She then says she'll have to replace me. Literally replies to my email in a really scary way, saying she would REPLACE ME (um, really? Do you really have to be that bitchy or make it come out sounding that way? Could you not just have said due to my bad attendance I was unfortunately unable to participate in orchestra)?  Good luck with replacing me, who else would do it? I only did it back then because, as I said, I thought she'd be 50% responsible for my HSC mark and I sucked up to her big time, did everything she told me to. Heck, if she'd been like, 'we need an extra double bassist for chamber orchestra. Go learn double bass', I probably would've done it. According to O in my homeroom, the orchestra is only filled with amateur year 8 musicians and no senior would join it, because no one wants Ms B yelling at them each week.

-During a choir rehearsal, told us and the choir teacher Ms V that she certainly would not want to be paying $10 (the school concert ticket price) to be hearing our bad singing.

-3 days before my HSC exam, she wouldn't let me in the lecture theatre until I signed in at student services, despite me telling her I'd never had to do this before. Waited 15 minutes for bitchy office lady to emerge, then was informed that there was no such thing as a sign-in sheet for the lecture theatre.

-Glared at me for not handing in my composition portfolio on the day it was due (when no one had told me it would be), then proceeded to scare and stress me on purpose by telling me it was due 20 minutes ago at 9am, when in fact it was due at 3pm according to the BOS.

-Asked me if I had a job. Felt awkward telling her about teaching piano (at that point I still believed her telling me I sucked), so just told her I babysat. She got all high and mighty and went on and on: ('well when I was 15, I was working at Myer'). I got the last laugh at the end though, because I'd much rather be getting paid $40 an hour teaching kids than getting half that amount working at Myer dealing with shoplifters and bratty old ladies wanting refunds.

I can only conclude she is psychotic. She really does show signs of being a psychopath, like legitimately. I am not exaggerating at all, and seriously consider her one. Mostly her inability to empathise but scarily enough being charismatic when needed. So glad she is leaving the school at the end of the year because of so many complaints (she probably felt a bit redundant because no one wanted her to be in charge of orchestra/teach their kid/assess their kid).

http://rohan7things.wordpress.com/2013/02/17/how-to-get-rid-of-a-bully-or-psychopath/

http://www.decision-making-confidence.com/characteristics-of-a-psychopath.html

It ended up taking a superwoman like my new music ext teacher, C (friends with my principal), to fix the damage Ms B had done, and by then I was constantly down and telling myself I sucked and starting to believe Ms B. I remember one thing Ms B told me once (after I'd confided in her my beta blocker consumption in a last-ditch attempt to get her to be more understanding/to like me). She was like, 'Darling, all musicians are perfectionists, that's why we all get stage fright. I once vomited from nerves. All symphony orchestra musicians take beta blockers. Don't expect it to go away. Performance anxiety NEVER goes away, it just gets worse over time'. Thanks for the fucking reassuring advice, Ms B. Funny, because in the end it wasn't perfectionism that caused my performance anxiety, but Ms B. I felt instantly better with C, and nailed almost all of my HSC pieces as well as my yr 12 last recital as well as the yr 12 concert accompanying Rh. All that with barely any stage fright and performance anxiety, because I didn't have to focus on Ms B telling me about all the crap wrong with my playing an hour before being due to perform. You try practising for 14 hours a week, and then still have someone tell you that you suck without telling you how to improve. Dr H was really understanding after one recital where Ms B was in the audience and I didn't feel good about performing, she later told C that she thought I was 'superb' and had C suggest for me to study music at the con. Both Dr H and C and even Ms H to an extent were like my saviours.

The scariest thing about Ms B was by far the fact that she was all false pretences. Appeared completely sane and nice (but she could somehow balance this with making people feel super inferior). But beneath this exterior, she was a cold manipulative conniving psychopath. Scarily enough, her enjoyment of terrorising students on a superficial level wasn't even the reason why I so hated her. She only did the terrorising thing in orchestra and stuff in a 'super strict teacher way'. But even super strict teachers are usually nice normal people, at the very least sane, in reality. Alone with me, Ms B was the opposite of what she was like in orchestra. She'd appear nice, but was really a control freak psychopath underneath. Usually, I can read people pretty well. I think Ms B is one of the few people who has ever been able to really get to me, who has actually won mind games with me. One day, I'd think maybe she does care after all. Then the next day she would do something behind a sneaky facade of kindness that was anything but. In the end, after the 'shocking' incident, I was literally left bawling in senior study at the library after Rh and EP saw my facial expression and asked what was wrong. Various people saw me, and someone must have reported to Dr H when they asked me what was wrong (because when I complained, Dr H had told me that some girls had said they were concerned about Ms B telling me I was 'shocking'-ly bad). Dr H repeatedly asked me if it was just the two of us alone all those times Ms B had put me down, so she must have realised that she was just trying to be a bully on purpose. I concluded she was indeed out to get me, and now I realise how naive I was to let her get to me that way.

It sounds melodramatic, and that's the thing with her. She has a way of doing things that cut you deeply but appear to be all nice and fine on the surface, so that to this day I am still puzzling over what her true intentions were. No one fully understands what it's like to deal with a psychopath. When you complain to people about Ms B, you even realise you may sound a bit melodramatic and oversensitive, and when you say things out loud about her, what she has done doesn't even appear to be all that evil, so you sound stupid. You have to be there to understand what she's like (and the only people who understood my issues with Ms B were the people who'd experienced her authoritative strict control freak side, but even these people didn't understand the worst of it). The thing with psychopaths is that they are inherently psychopathic with everyone, not just one person they hate, and that was certainly true with Ms B. I never gave her a reason to hate me, and I don't think she did (I was all smiles and thanks miss and hi miss and sorry miss even the day before I complained about her). She was even psychopathic with students she 'liked', such as the really talented year 11 violinist. Though she never seemed to get along well with any of the pianists. You have to understand though, that I truly don't think she EVER hated me. She bullied me maybe even unconsciously. I never gave her any reason to hate me. Anything she told me to join, I would. I was all nice and smiley and high-pitched voice polite to her (I embarrassingly enough was sickeningly polite, almost sucking up to her, in a way I wouldn't be caught dead acting in front of a normal teacher). Even the day before I complained about her, she told me I was a 'good girl' and if parents rang her up on the phone with me there she'd be like 'I'm here with my darling Joanna'. Yes, she's one of those types of people who say weird things like that but somehow manages to pull it off/get away with it. I never complained to her face, or gave her any hint I hated her. Even when she told me I was bad at what I was playing, I'd smile and act non-upset and ask her for advice because I'm a good bullshitter (and she would give me the shittiest vague advice, like 'you have to play it more like the recording, just listen to it and think of how to play in a way a famous pianist would'). WTF? No shit, Sherlock, I listen to those recordings just so I can experiment because I have nothing better to do than stuff up my performances, and play the OPPOSITE of how a concert pianist plays. Lol if that's how she teaches piano, no wonder she's turned psychopathic. If she thought that was 'advice', just magically telling me to play like the recording, what a shame a lightbulb didn't go off in my head and all of a sudden transform my playing into fricken Lang Lang at the Opera House.

But no one got to feel the full extent of her psychopathic nature but me. Because I was her most victimised at this school. I was like her little pet experiment, and the circumstances were perfect for her as we were alone in a classroom environment (I sometimes wonder what it would've been like if there was another person doing music ext), and she could tell I would believe anything she said, so she used that to hurt me. Situation was further worsened by the fact that we both were pianists, and that awkwardly enough we both had the same level of piano qualifications (I had gotten my diploma only 7 years after she did, even though she's my mum's age). So technically, I had no real reason to even listen to her critiques over my piano teacher's. Music isn't like any other subject. It's insanely subjective, and half the time the teacher, I can guarantee you (at a musically average or bad school) would have no idea what the F they are talking about in the comments sections of you task feedback. What if I played the Harmonica, and I got marked by a teacher who played drums who knew nothing about harmonica? What if I had already gotten my master's diploma in piano performance (as another girl I know my age taught by my piano teacher does), and Ms B only had just received her bachelor's, then decided to critique me? What then, do you take a teacher seriously when they have lower qualifications than you do? I used to respect her judgements (I was so glad to get a teacher who played piano, not trumpet like Mr L). But then I soon realised she was even worse. Fine, if you want to be like Mr L, give me no feedback during lessons and don't give me feedback at all, ever, except when you are marking me. If you can't contribute improvements to my playing, then may as well leave me be and not worsen it by pretending you know what you are doing when you don't even play my instrument. But Ms B? Not only did she not give me feedback, she had to worsen my playing by saving 'feedback' for 2 hours before a performance and making me nervous on purpose! If that is not sabotage I don't know what is. Her favourite moments were probably after the recitals, when she would tell me I hadn't played well at all and then proceed to give me feedback pretentiously (like she had her freaking doctorate diploma or something), when it wasn't even correct/clear or justifiable! Then another long stretch of like 2 months with no feedback until the day of a recital, then the cycle repeats.

Ms B hated admitting she didn't know something or couldn't do something. She would rather give me the wrong feedback/answer than not give me one at all. Mr L had no issues telling me to check things up on the internet myself when I'd ask him basic questions about composition, like where is the proper placement of such and such italian direction on the score, or which string/finger should I indicate the cellist play this low note with. I used to think he was just being irritating by making me do my own 'research' even when I couldn't find it online and once he even made me text my cellist to answer my questions. But I later realised he only did that when he genuinely didn't know the answer to a question I asked (which puzzled me as he was doing his doctorate. Maybe a musicology degree, not a composition one? Or maybe because he was doing his doctorate at a not-that-good uni, not the con). Ms B liked to just pretend she had 'high expectations' to cover up her insecurity about her own abilities, but thankfully Dr H never fell for that. I remember Dr H saying to Ms H, 'K has high expectations too, but she teaches in a positive way'. Ms B's just about one of the most intelligent people I've ever met, I'll give her that.

I now think Ms B hired the crappy inexperienced submissive (well not all of them, but most inexperienced teachers don't know how to deal with bully coordinators) music department on purpose so that no one would have power over her or threaten her leadership position. Because let's face it, the entire music department sucked big time. At least 3 teachers frequently had to deal with parent/student complaints. All but one of the teachers (There were 5) came during or after 2011. Apparently something big happened to the (apparently good) music department before then, we don't know what but all the teachers left for better schools or positions. According to Ki, Dr H knew about the situation before I even complained, as our music department was absolute shit when she first came to the school this year. Especially compared to her last school's. Whilst Dr H's old school orchestra were playing masters-degree level violin concertos at the opera house, my school orchestra was still playing 'bananas in pyjamas' for the kindergarteners. And there was a reason why I was the only one doing both Music 2 and extension, when Dr H's old school had at least TEN girls doing extension. But all the other music teachers have hope. No matter how lazy Ms V is, or how ignorant Mr L is, at least they are not at all evil, and they are not psychopaths. They just lacked the personality traits you need to be a teacher, and also lacked the experience. Starting with Ms B leaving, Dr H is 'changing things', hopefully. I'd like to think Dr H really cares (she was always nice to me), because she has really strong ties to my school. She was the old school captain when she was an ex-student here, her daughters came to the school too, she was the old English co-ordinator, then director of studies, and now she's returned as the principal. Apparently Ka at her old school is on long service leave, so she will be doing Dr H a favour next year and come in to sort out the music department. Mr L BETTER up his game, too, because Ka is the best, most well-known music teacher in the whole freaking nation.

Psychopathy checklist (courtesy Wikipedia):

Facet 1: Interpersonal Glibness/superficial charm Grandiose sense of self-worth Pathological lying Conning/manipulative Facet 2: Affective Lack of remorse or guilt Emotionally shallow Callous/lack of empathy Failure to accept responsibility for own actions

Facet 3: Lifestyle Need for stimulation/proneness to boredom Parasitic lifestyle Lack of realistic, long-term goals Impulsivity Irresponsibility Facet 4: Antisocial Poor behavioral controls Early behavioral problems Juvenile delinquency Revocation of conditional release Criminal versatility

Many short-term marital relationships Promiscuous sexual behavior

Without a doubt, she was a psychopath.

-She had superficial charm, alright. Was charismatic enough for me not to see through her at first, and she could suck up big time to important teachers/parents when needed.

-Grandiose sense of self-worth, for sure. Liked to make others feel inferior. E.g. the job at Myer thing.

-Pathological lying - ensemble and cellist issue.

-Conniving/manipulative: our whole fucking relationship was based on manipulation and mind games.

-Lack of remorse/guilt: told me I was 'shocking', and that I 'didn't perform well at all', did not feel remorse about giving us the wrong exams in yr 11, or care for that matter.

-Emotionally shallow? Yeah, you could say that again...

-Lack of empathy is obvious

-Failure to accept responsibility is a big one. Loved blaming Mr L for all her problems.

-Not sure about her lifestyle...though lack of long-term goals may be one (she has taught at and moved between many, many schools), as well as irresponsible.

-Not sure about the antisocial behaviour, as who knows what a mini Ms B was like. Though promiscuous sexual behaviour I could say was one thing, like the backless dress and sexual innuendos.

So now you will surely still understand and remember all the hell Ms B put you through, future Joanna, and know that no, you weren't being melodramatic at the time. Not at all.