January 19, 2006

In typical me fashion I procrastinated about the whole career decision to the point where I almost missed out being able to apply this year. The school set up an arbitrary deadline of 5PM today for you to submit a ton of paperwork to the Dean, including 6 essays (one of which was to descibe why you chose the field you are going into). Well, silly little me hadn't started any of the essays (not even the ones I COULD have started) because I was too busy being confused/overwhelmed/scared by the decision. When I went in to speak with my advisor on Tuesday I figured she would tell me that I had to wait it out anyway in order to be sure of my decision. But that's not what she said. She told me she expected my stuff in by the deadline. That was less than 48 hours away!

At 4:59 today I handed all my paperwork in, including 18 pages of essays. Ouch my aching head!

This is only the beginning of a whole year of craziness for me. I am trying hard not to freak out. I went from being confused and living day to day to being a med school applicant. Suddenly there is a LONG list of things that need to get done during the course of the year. Scary things!

I will need strength from God in order to manage my time well. The only way I will be able to do all this and still be able to play my oboe is if I take control of my life and my time. I have to stop procrastinating and I need to stay on top of everything.

Anyway, here is part of a quick note I wrote to my teacher today. We should be meeting on Sunday for my next lesson.

I was unable to practice last night because of the writing, but the night before I practiced for a little over an hour. I'm starting to understand how it is that serious players practice many hours a day. Sometimes I feel like I've done nothing but long tones and some scales when the hour is up. If I wanted to also practice my repertoire I really need two hours minimum.

On Tuesday I ended up doing arpeggios in the key of C after my usual warm up. I hadn't seriously worked on them before because my intervals were just way too dirty. Now they are ok enough to not hurt my ears. It was quite a challenging exercise! I had about 20 minutes left to practice my Jacob pieces before my mouth got overly tired. Your reed is still working wonderfully for me, but my two reeds are hit or miss.

I am about to go down now to practice. I'm thinking of working on some technical etudes today (maybe from the Sellner book) and maybe devote some more time to the pieces.

If only I had 2 or 3 extra hours each day :-)