Another Comment:

I posted a comment on Almost Famous' blog called "Friends for the Rest of College?" today:

This is a great topic to post about, because for most students our age, the change to college meant the biggest change of best friends you've ever experienced (because of the locational change of course). I still keep in contact with a lot of my old friends and hung out with them over Thanksgiving, but for the most part the set of people that know most about what's going on with me and the ones I spend my weekends with right now are my new SMU friends. And I never really considered until I read your post that these new friends of mine are totally not set in stone either. 

And I know everyone wants to have the perfect situations like the television shows (Friends, Sex and the City, etc.) but the truth is that you can't always be with your "besties" forever because life might take you somewhere else. However, I think it's important to value the friends that you make along the way and just enjoy the people you're around in the present and not worry too much about the future.

"God will help you overcome any hardship."

So after practicing my trumpet, piano, and singing ALL of my Thanksgiving break in preparation for my semester juries I returned to school feeling so responsible and great for having kept my work ethic up. However, the first day back I came to the realization that I am TOTALLY swamped with other things to do: papers to write, music to write, a debate to prepare for, workbook pages to do, chapters to read, and a fire safety class to attend. Geez this week was really stacking up in my planner more than it usually does! And I found out that I have 2 finals on the day of my birthday and then 2 more after that, which was disappointing because I just got through telling my parents that I'll be home again soon on my birthday. 

The Saturday I came back to campus I had a football that I had to play at for marching band and I also had to continue to prepare for a very physically and mentally taxing trumpet playing test for Monday's Masterclass and finish up some music theory homework. On Monday my day lasted from 8AM (my first class) until 9PM (the end of Masterclass) with only 2 hours of break in there. And of course there was lots of homework to keep me up for a while after that. Tuesday was a little bit better only lasting from 8AM to 6PM, with 1 hour of break (my other 1 hour was used to attend a mandatory fire safety class) and of course lots more homework at the end of that day. Today lasted from 8AM to 6PM, with a 2 hour break (1 hour was used for a trumpet lesson) and a terrible scheduling error sent me running across campus all the way from where I work to McFarlin Auditorium in the middle of my day, because I wrote down an incorrect time for my conference and missed it entirely! UGH! 

However at the end of today I got a chance to squeeze in a second to sit down and have a nice dinner with some friends. And the thing I do everyday is get a fortune cookie and today my fortune read:

"God will help you overcome any hardship."

This usually lame or funny fortune cookie gave me the best advice I could hear at the time. It is something I always know to be true, but need to be reminded from time to time. I taped it to the front of my over-booked planner where it is needed most ha ha :) 

Hopefully I can remember this while running around like a crazy person tomorrow as you all should too!! Good luck with finals, juries, recitals, debates, papers, and whatever else you are taking on everyone :)

Making Connections

When I read the third assigned reading from "Blue Highways" by William Least Heat Moon I did not understand why the author spent so much time with Miz Alice's discriptions of her philosophies on life. But after considering what the author is going through I realized that there was a clear connection between the two.

Miz Alice explains that, "Education is thinking, and thinking is looking for yourself and seeing what's there, not what you got told was there. Then you put what you see together." And her philosophy about learning in that sense directly applies to what Least Heat Moon is doing himself.

He is on a journey to find himself in a way and not necessarily to just get away from his problems. He left his old life and is now traveling and just taking the world in and seeing it for himself. He is meeting new people and seeing new places and it seems as if that is what that is what Miz Alice would find great value in.

Another Comment

I posted a response to A Roach's "Cell Phones Used as an Educational Toll" today: 

Wow, I thought all of this posting homework on blackboard and using that site for information and communication was a great idea, but in my opinion that is as far as we should go with classroom technology for now. I think the office hours and school emailing system is a good enough communication method and we should just concentrate on putting in the work ourselves and not get too caught up on pushing the technology envelope. 

Maybe in the future smart phones might be a useful classroom tool, but personally I could go without the extra expense for now. 

This is a really interesting topic. Do you have a link to the article you quoted?

Revised: "'Till Death do us Part?" Hardly...

There are tons of variations of what relationships are, what they mean, and how real they really are. The main point I'm bringing up that is in question to me right now is a boyfriend/ girlfriend relationship. 

I had been dating the same person for almost two years now and it suddenly all ended last night. I thought our relationship would be forever and so do a lot of people my age and even younger, but the truth is that nothing is set in stone. I looked back and realized that my feelings had changed and then I thought how could I have felt this way one day and another way the very next day. 

Then I thought about little kids in middle school and even elementary school that break out the "L" word without even thinking twice, they even go so far as saying that they're going to marry that person. It's insane. 

However, I have come to the conclusion that no one can really know all these answers for sure 100% of the time even if they're wiser with age. Some people get married and say "I do... 'til death do us part" but then get divorced within so little as a year. Relationships questions are kind of something that are unanswerable. However, I also feel that I may just be ranting because I felt so secure in my relationship, but then ended it myself and now I am miserable. I do not feel happier than I was by any means. Unexplainable.

If I am so sad now how could it be the right thing? Friends keep telling me "It'll be ok" and "you'll feel better later". But why go through it? It hurts my grades, my skill level as a musician, my sleeping and eating patterns, and even other relationships (as in ones with other friends).   

*****

I wrote the above post about two weeks ago and once again my feelings changed completely (typical haha). I think it might be kind of distasteful to share all of the details of my relationship on a blog that I created for an English class, but my boyfriend and I are now back together. Maybe true love and "real" relationships are real... who really knows? I feel as if our relationship is stronger now though after experiencing some distance, discomfort, and facing the realization that we're crazy about each other. I guess we do not necessarily need each other (no one should put that kind of burden on another person, because it's not fair to either one), but we definitely want each other and that is good enough for me.  

I hope this blog doesn't sound too cliche, but now I am finding the value in a good relationship. Though it might be some consuming, complicated, ride of emotions, I want every part of it and I am thankful for the person I am with. 

Geez it is so weird to see my emotions that completely changed typed out on a blog. 

Breathing is Easy, it's Easy to do

"Living is Simple" by Switchfoot is one of my favorite songs. The tune as well as the meaning of the song itself just relaxes me and makes me feel less stressed. When I think about the lyrics, I begin to realize myself that there are bigger problems out there than mine. In this song Switchfoot is singing about the fact that simply living is so easy to do, like breathing it's just kind of an involuntary motion that just happens. And maybe it means that living a bigger more meaningful life is harder, but when they sing the part about how they've "made their choices" and "chosen today" it just kind of puts everything into prospective for me and I realize that I can't dwell on little troublesome things that make me feel as if "I'm falling apart" because the truth is... I'm really not. Everything will be okay as it always is and God will take care of me, because everything happens for a reason and I just have to put my faith in God to make things happen for me. The "gravity" that they sing about will take me where I'm supposed to go so there's no use stressing and feeling down about little things.

Here's the lyrics:

Living in simple
Living is simple

Living is simple
It's gravity; gravity isn't so hard
Living is simple
It's entropy; entropy, falling apart
I'm falling apart again

Living is simple
And breathing is easy, it's easy to do
Living is simple
And losing is easy; I'm losing my cool
I'm losing my cool again

All will be made well
Will be made well
Will be made well
Will be well

Is this fiction?
Is this fiction?
Hope has given himself to the worst

Is this fiction or divine comedy?
Where the last of the last finish first

Living is simple
Living is simple
Living is simple

Living is dying
Your mercy, Your mercy is how I believe
Living is dying
I can't understand it
I'm down on my knees confessing my needs again

I've had my choices
I've chosen today
I've had my choices
Choices remain

Is this fiction? Is this fiction?
Hope has given himself to the worst
Is this fiction or divine comedy?
Where the last of the last finish first

Living is simple
Living is simple
Living is simple

$$$

Upon entering college, most teenagers find themselves making their first financial decisions of their lives. By becoming more and  more responsible for paying for necessary things, the money choices are in their hands now (whether they earned it or get a set allowance from their parents) and with that newfound freedom, some teenagers tend to go a little overboard with spending and don't make the best decisions and that seems to be a very potentially harmful problem.     

I had never thought that I would ever take out a loan before I entered college. The idea of having to borrow money for something I want later seemed like such a bad idea. However, I found the choice to come to Southern Methodist University despite the extremely high tuition fees, dorm costs, and meal plans to be a wise investment. And even with all of the scholarship money and grants I got from the school of music there was still going to be a relatively small loan that I would have to take out. 

So I made my choice to come here because I wanted to and took out a very demanding job over the summer. I became a baker with some friends and was working about a 30 hour week (while attending a music conservatory at the same time because I wanted to keep improving as a musician in order to be competitive in college). And even though my friends went out all the time to shop with their big pay checks, I made my first financial decision (beside the one to actually take out the loan) to have my checks directly deposited to remain untouched by me all summer. This was a great benefit to me and a great life lesson.

And now I see others in college that are always buying new things and making financial decisions that are not always in their best interest and then I found out that their parents are paying for the college education entirely. I think that is not a very wise decision and potentially very harmful to the student later on. They will not know that feeling of devotion necessary for working hard now and not getting all the little things they want now, but getting the big things that they ultimately need later. This is a very essential life skill in my opinion and not obtaining that since of frugality in college at the least can lead to a not so prosperous future.  

"'Til Death do us Part"? Hardly...

There are tons of variations of what relationships are, what they mean, and how real they really are. The main point I'm bringing up that is in question to me right now is a boyfriend/ girlfriend relationship. 

I had been dating the same person for almost two years now and it suddenly all ended last night. I thought our relationship would be forever and so do a lot of people my age and even younger, but the truth is that nothing is set in stone. I looked back and realized that my feelings had changed and then I thought how could I have felt this way one day and another way the very next day. 

Then I thought about little kids in middle school and even elementary school that break out the "L" word without even thinking twice, they even go so far as saying that they're going to marry that person. It's insane. 

However, I have come to the conclusion that no one can really know all these questions for sure 100% of the time even if they're wiser with age. Some people get married and say "I do... 'til death do us part" but then get divorced within so little as a year. Relationships questions are kind of something that are unanswerable. However, I also feel that I may just be ranting because I felt so secure in my relationship, but then ended it myself and now I am miserable. I do not feel happier than I was by any means. Unexplainable.

If I am so sad now how could it be the right thing. Friends keep telling me "It'll be ok" and "you'll feel better later". But why go through it? It hurts my grades, my skill level as a musician, my sleeping and eating patterns, and even other relationships (as in ones with other friends). Any insight anyone?  

Comment

I attempted to post a comment on Paris Hilton's "Taking Attendance? Back to High School" back when we were doing that trial run for posting comments in class, but it didn't work so I emailed the comment to myself:

From:   Sloan, Rochelle Catherine  Sent:   Fri 9/5/2008 10:43 AM  To:   Sloan, Rochelle Catherine  Cc:     Subject:   Blog Comment  Attachments:  View As Web Page

A friend of mine that attends UNT told me on his first day that he had a class with 315 people in it and that they do not take attendance and I was shocked because the largest class I am in contains around 30 people and the teacher calls my name out everyday. So I agree, it is ridiculous that SMU actually checks daily to see if you're in class. And the truth is that it should not matter whether or not we attend class or not to the professors because we are paying thousands of dollars for our education, so the choice of how we plan to utilize our very expensive education should be up to us.

And then reposted it today! I hate technology sometimes...

A Consuming, Forbidden Love

I thought I would make a different kind of post today because of some random inspiration that stirred up some thoughts earlier this week. As I was sitting in a practice room I heard from the room next door one of the most beautiful pieces of music I have ever heard. It just made me so emotional upon hearing it I just couldn't help thinking of what the inspiration for this deep consuming song was. So I knocked on the door and complimented the musician and asked her what the name of the song was. She called it Moonlight Sonata. 

I looked it up online and found the meaning and researched a couple more songs upon finding this one. And it turns out you can find so much about a piece of music by just looking at how the composer lived. That's so interesting to me and I wanted to just share this song with everybody after sharing the underlying meaning of it:

Basically this song was written about the love shared by thirty-one-year-old Beethoven and the seventeen-year- old Countess Giulietta Guicciardi. The two fell in after only a few piano lessons together.  Their love continued to grow stronger as time went on, and Beethoven became so entranced with this woman that he wrote a love song to her.  After dedicating the piece to her, Beethoven proposed.  She accepted;  however, one of her parents did not consent to the union so the marriage never commenced. Although the ending to this love story does not end as we would want, the love that they shared inspired one of the most inspiring piano works of Beethoven’s career.  

This was the only recording I could find of it, but the song is truly gorgeous as you can hear:

Looking on the Bright Side of Things

I still get a feeling of both anxiety and excitement when I walk up to that tall, outstanding building known as Meadows School of the Arts. And I thank God everyday when I travel up the steps to attend class at 8:00 AM every morning. 

When I first came to SMU for my audition for the School of Music I was a nervous, shaking wreck and could hardly walk. I had heard that they were only taking two incoming, freshman trumpets into the studio this year. I just knew that the trumpet professor was going to have his chance to be overly critical and would not have a problem shooting me down after a five hour drive, because there were around 100 kids my age for him to chose from. 

I find myself reflecting on my daily blessings and it gets me through the day. When I get overwhelmed, stressed, and feel like I have too much on my plate, I keep in mind all those hours I working to make it into this school and to be talented enough to make enough scholarship money to be able to afford it. And it is amazing how fast I can turn my mindset around and find the willpower to continue through the day. 

So I am sure students all around campus have similar stories and similar inspirations that help them daily (whether it is a religious reason, personal experience, or something as simple as a quote or story). I think that it would be cool if I could get some other peers to share their thoughts via comments on this blog. Thanks!