Aeterna13's Xanga

... purgatory?

Mon, 02 Nov 2009 20:56:54 GMT

The rough draft of my annotated bibliography for Research Techniques was due last Friday. This draft was to have 15 of our 20-25 sources. Two of the sources I had ordered from OhioLink didn't come in, but I was able to scrounge up enough to hand in for the draft. I got those two books in today. One of them is exactly what I expected it to be: a long and detailed expounding upon various aspects of Britten's War Requiem (which is my topic). The other, entitled Masses for the Dead and motives for having them celebrated, was decidedly not what I was expecting.

Here I was, thinking I would get something with a nice history of the Requiem Mass and how it has been used over the years and why ... you know, sort of an anthropological take on things, which would have been a nice complement to the sources I already have. Instead, I got 121 pages about how masses for the dead should be celebrated more often to set all of the souls of the departed free from purgatory.

Also, for any of you who have read (and/or seen a film adaptation of ) Pride and Prejudice, I'm pretty sure the author of this book is some sort of a Catholic reincarnation of Mr. Collins. As proof, an excerpt:

"The Church in her maternal solicitude for the salvation of her children has condescended to the weakness of poor fallen nature, and has commuted these canonical penances into Indulgences, by means of which the temporal punishment due to sin can more easily be paid. Do Christains in general take advantage of this loving condescension of the Church? Many of the prayers which they recite daily are enriched with partial, and, upon certain conditions, also with plenary Indulgences."

Oh dear. I'm afraid I'm one source farther away from a completed bibliography than I thought I was, but on the other hand, this was good for a laugh.

Tired

Wed, 30 Sep 2009 16:33:53 GMT

I'm tired. I'm reeeeaally tired.

I know I've mentioned before that I tend to go on bouts of early-awakening insomnia. It's come back. I wake up at 3:30 or 4:00, and spend the rest of the wee hours trying to get back to sleep, and trying NOT to think about the inevitable mountain of things I need to do that day, because that won't help me sleep, and it'll be difficult to do them during the day if I don't have enough sleep anyway.

That and yesterday was Tuesday. And Tuesdays are always tiring. I even got up extra early yesterday to work like crazy on my composition for my lesson.

I'm been trying to manage my time better, and I've set aside a good chunk of time for composition in the morning. On Monday, I got to the practice room, opened my backpack, and realized that I'd left my composition folder at home. Yesterday, I did observe the time (and then some!) and got a lot done. Today, I got to the practice room and spent an hour trying not to fall asleep at the keyboard. I may have managed to write a few notes. It's hard to remember. Then I gave up and listened to calming music on my iPod.

Right now, it's my library time. To my credit, I am in the library, but I'm not exactly utilizing the time the way I'm supposed to, as is evidenced by the fact that I'm updating my Xanga.

Is it Fall Break yet??

Are you getting the H1N1 (swine flu) vaccine?

Sun, 27 Sep 2009 19:57:04 GMT

I got the non-swine variety of the flu shot on Friday. This was the first time I'd ever had one. Somehow, I never got around to it before. I knew that with some shots, you could feel mild symptoms of the disease for a few days afterward, but I wasn't really prepared for that. In the middle of Friday night, I woke up with a fever and a sore throat, which mostly went away by morning, but I still felt kinda tired and achey all day. After all of that, I don't know if I really want a swine flu shot.

I just answered this Featured Question; you can answer it too!

Moving forward

Fri, 25 Sep 2009 22:48:48 GMT

I have my Yahoo home page set to show me my Libra horoscope, more for kicks and giggles than anything else. It's generally some sort of generic platitude, or random advice about my love life (because I totally have one). Today's was randomly relevent:

Quit the hand-wringing and stress. You can handle any outcome -- just move forward.

During the past few weeks, life has gotten to be pretty overwhelming for me. My classes, while they are mostly enjoyable, require a tremendous amount of work. The hardest one for me is a class on music after 1945. As it turns out, I know much less about music after 1945 than I thought I did, and (it seems to me) I know far less than everyone else who's taking the class. I'm not used to being that person who's lagging behind in a class. It unsettles me a little.

My job is taking up a lot of time. I still enjoy it. The students I'm working with are all really nice, and I've found it to be really interesting to attend a bunch of classes in subjects I'm generally unfamiliar with, without having to do the homework. But sometimes it gets crazy, especially with the logistics of picking up the computers from Disability Services and carting them all over campus.

But what really got me bogged down was the fact that I started feeling sick over the weekend. I was able to circumvent actual sickness by taking a few doses of Airborne over the course of the weekend, but fighting off sickness, even with immune support, is tiring. So I didn't get as much accomplished as I wanted, and went into the beginning of this week still tired, and not well prepared.

As I was going through the beginning of the week, I found that, while I still wasn't quite sick, I was just feeling ... odd. I never wanted to eat anything even when I was hungry, I found myself feeling alternately chilled and overheated depending on whether I was outside or inside. I didn't know what was going on with me, so I went to the health center, where I was told that I'm healthy enough, but I'm just under a lot of stress. Still, they thought it was a good idea to do some blood work just in case. Got the results from that today. I'm perfectly normal.

I may or may not have mentioned the ironic fact that the Disability Services office is located on the top floor of an old building with narrow hallways and an extremely slow elevator. That irony was compounded this week when the elevator stopped working. It's technically working again now, but whenever it opens up on a floor, it tends to stay open until it's called to another floor, and every once in a while, it only opens a few inches when you get to the floor you need, and you have to pull it open the rest of the way. If I didn't have a roller bag with computers in tow, I'd just take the stairs.

So with all of this craziness, of course the thing that goes by the wayside is my composition. This has happened to me before, and it's always frustrating, because it's the reason I'm here, and I can't find time to do it. This, along with everything else has gotten me starting to feel inadequate, like I did all this work to get to grad school, and now that I'm here, I'm not good enough.

But that's ridiculous, and I know it. If I wasn't good enough to be here, I wouldn't have gotten in.

This evening, after spending much of the week rushing to catch up with everything I've been falling behind on, I finally put in a good two hour block of composition time, and I got a lot accomplished. I felt, for the first time in a while, completely absorbed in creating music. I missed that, and it's such a blessing to have it back. I'm feeling in good health, and I've got a weekend in front of me in which I'll be able to get my hands dirty in some composing.

There's no need to worry.

Cheap food

Fri, 18 Sep 2009 09:56:30 GMT

Over the past few weeks, I've discovered that if I'm too lazy to make my own lunch, the best way to go about getting fed is to go to Wendy's, order two things off the value menu, and skip the drink (I've got water). I've usually gotten a chicken sandwich and a baked potato, and together, that's less than three dollars, and pretty filling, to boot.

Well, now Wendy's is having a value menu special. Select value menu items are 99¢ like they used to (and should) be. Yesterday, I got chili and a baked potato for $1.98, and I could hardly finish it! I may do the same today.

Yay, choir!

Fri, 11 Sep 2009 00:30:15 GMT

I had a pretty crazy stressful couple of days, and tomorrow will have its own stresses as well, but earlier this evening, I took a break from all of that to attend choir rehearsal at the church I've been going to. Best idea ever. I didn't have to pretend I'm more knowledgeable about music since 1945 than I actually am. I didn't have to type everything that was said and worry (while trying to convince myself not to worry) about missing things. I just had to sing.

Not that I'm all that disenchanted with school or anything. I love being here, and when I'm not feeling stressed about it all, I enjoy learning about crazy music (I've actually started work on a serial composition!), and I enjoy transcribing (I get to learn about all kinds of new things without having to do the homework!), but sometimes, it's nice to sit in the choir loft, joking with the ladies sitting next to me in the alto section, and sing music that is unambiguously tonal.

Recent news and a random anomaly

Sat, 05 Sep 2009 13:38:20 GMT

There are generally two reasons for me to not blog frequently.

The first is that so much is going on in my life that I don't know how to put it all in blog form without spending a good hour or so blogging every day, which I obviously have no time for. What tends to happen is that I get chains of events going on, and the one later on make no sense without explaining the earlier ones, and the farther I get in the chain, the more I don't want to explain everything.

The second is that nothing is going on in my life --

Pausing to report an anomaly. Aparently they test the tornado siren here at 10:00 on the first Saturday morning of the month. It only went on for a few seconds. I'm used to a good couple of minutes of sirening at noon on the first Friday. Hmm. The things you learn.

-- SO! The second reason is that nothing is going on in my life that is worth reporting in blog form.

Obviously, what with starting work on my master's degree in a new town with new people, you can probably guess which of the two reasons I have right now.

I'm starting to settle into my transcribing job. For a while there, I found myself barely keeping up with the lecture, especially in a particular class that is turning out to be amazingly discussion-heavy. You don't really think about it if you don't have to type everything out, but there's a lot more being said in a smaller space of time when you've got more people saying things. You also don't notice how rarely people speak in complete sentences in a discussion, unless it's your job to write a transcript in complete sentences.

As for my classes, boy am I glad I didn't take more than I'm taking. I'm already pretty swamped with homework, and with a part-time job (more than 10 hours a week--I'm not used to this!) my days are pretty packed.

I like my classes, though! I'm taking Theory Pedagogy, or in other words, a class on how to teach Theory. We're getting into a lot of psychological concepts of learning and critical thinking, which explains a lot about most of the classes I've ever taken.

In my advising session, I was told I should take a class on Tuesday evenings, but I didn't know what this class was. But I took it. Turns out, it's a class about music after 1945, and I'm really glad I'm taking it. I took 20th Century music last year, but due to certain circumstances, we didn't cover much of the second half of the century, and what we did cover, I wasn't in much of a fit state to learn (this, if you will remember, was the end of last fall semester), since I was too busy going insane. Also, when I auditioned both at Cincinnati and at BG, I was asked about my influences. In both situations, they commented on how little I was familiar with more recent repertoire.

This course is going to be a doozy, I can tell, but I think I'll enjoy it.

Research Techniques will probably be boring, but it's a big class (by graduate standards) with a lot of comraderie, so we'll get through.

My new composition teacher wants me to explore atonal music, so we'll se how that works. It's a little odd having a new composition teacher. I've had Dr. Ryan for four years, and he's a pretty quiet guy with the driest sense of humor you've ever witnessed. My new teacher is a very bright and talkative woman who offered to share her cranberry-almond trail mix the moment I walked in the door. It's an adjustment, but I think it's a good one.

What else? Oh! Choir! I'm in the University Choral Society, which is composed of students and community members and sings with the Toledo Symphony. We're singing the Messiah this year, which is exciting for me. It rounds out a pretty crazy Tuesday. I have to arrive late because there's a time overlap with my Music after 1945 class. It's kind of interesting to go straight from modern music to Handel.

So this is my life right now. I've made it through the second week. In some ways, it's easier than the first, because there's less running around trying to figure everything out, but on the other hand, this is when all the professors begin to feel no remorse in piling the work on you. So it's still crazy, just a different kind of crazy.

I'll be going home over the Labor Day weekend. I'm slightly terrified that I won't get any of my homework done, but I guess we'll see how that works out.

I'm sorry, but your computer is suffering from temporary amnesia.

Fri, 28 Aug 2009 13:55:55 GMT

I thought I'd take a few minutes to talk about something slightly scary that happened to me yesterday morning.

So the night before, I saw that the shut-down button had that little shield symbol that it has when there are updates for your computer that require you to shut it down for the updates to take effect. So I shut it down, and went about my business getting ready for bed and all that.

The next morning, I turned on my computer, and stared around vacantly as it got itself started up. When I next looked at the screen to see how it was doing, to my shock, I found that the desktop had reverted to what it was when I'd first gotten the computer. The little desktop gadgets I'd personalized for myself (clock in the shape of a daisy, interactive calendar, weather forecast) were no longer there. In their place were all of the gadgets I'd deleted to make way for the gadgets I wanted.

WHAT THE CRAP????

Getting a little weirded out at this point, I clicked on the main menu, and found that it was exactly the way it had been when I'd gotten the computer. I clicked on my documents, and was faced with a window that said nothing but "this folder is empty". Thanks, I can see that.

So I was freaking out, and I decided the only thing to do was shut down the computer again and make it all go away.

About an hour later, when I turned my computer back on, I had my normal desktop with my normal gadgets, and all my documents were where they were supposed to be.

On the job

Thu, 27 Aug 2009 12:15:51 GMT

I'm reveling in the first stretch of free time I've had this week.

You know how in the first week of classes, you're still settling in, and there are scheduling difficulties and conflicts, and half the time, you don't really know what your semester's supposed to look like? Well, imagine living the first week of classes for three people at once. That's what happens when it's your job to accompany people to classes and type out everything that is said in them.

But things seem to be settling down a little, and I think (I hope) I'm starting to see the shape of the semester.

Settling in

Sat, 22 Aug 2009 13:11:58 GMT

I was kinda stressing about my entrance exams, and the fact that my advising appointment wasn't until Friday kinda exacerbated that worry. Turns out, I did exactly as I expected: I passed theory, and the more modern half of history, but I need to take the remedial class for the early half. I discovered that I can do this next summer, so that works out.

I have a light class load this semester. Twelve credits, exactly (if you don't count GradSTEP). As it turns out, this is a very good thing! Later yesterday morning, I went to the Disability Services offices to get my work schedule, and all together, I'll be working over 20 hours a week! This is wonderful news for my bank account, though not necessarily for my sanity.

I've finally moved into my apartment. For the past four years, I've been living in various apartments in the same complex, all of which have had the same general layout, so over time, I've settled into a system of where I put things in the bedroom, bathroom, kitchen, etc. Now that I'm moving into a different space, I keep running into little differences. My dresser has smaller drawers than what I'm used to, but there six of them, rather than three. It amounts to about the same size, but it was a little awkward deciding upon a different way of dividing up my clothes.

I have a full size bed now, rather than an extra-long twin. I thought ahead enough to get a corresponding set of sheets, but I didn't think of my comforter, which is plenty long enough, but not as wide as it should be. As I mentioned in last post's survey, I'm used to having two small bookshelves. Now I don't have any, and that makes me sad.

Mostly, I just need to get used to my new surroundings. I like the apartment well enough, and I especially like having my own room. That makes me happy. :)

Well, in the past half-hour or so, the rain has cleared, and I'm seeing some promising blue patches in the sky. It might very well be time for me to go around campus and find all the classrooms I'll be needing to get to.