And we're off.

I would never let anyone else plan my schedule.  If they did, I would never get anything done.  By anyone else’s definition, I am overcommitted.  By mine, it’s looking like it’ll be just right.  Despite the guerrilla-esque style Wheaton music faculty decided to employ for auditions, I managed to get myself in with a piano teacher who ran class sitting in a tree today, a choir director who goes to the same 6:15 a.m. pilates class I’ve convinced myself to attend, and a symphony conductor I’m sure has some quirks up his sleeve that I’ll find out about just as soon as rehearsal starts.

While I stand behind most of the decisions I’ve made thus far, there are a few where I really do question my judgment in a few decisions:

• scheduling my classes through lunch.  I mean, it wasn’t all that intentional, and I’m overcoming it with graham crackers, peanut butter, apples, and sharp cheddar cheese (big thanks to Sargento for making string cheese that tastes like something)
• auditioning for ensembles where sectionals for one overlap with rehearsals for the other
• agreeing to go to the square dance tonight just because Urban Passage people said I should

Some of my finer moments:

• telling the conservatory that really, I think two ensembles is enough
• answering my French professor’s plea for a verb to conjugate with manger (to eat) just so I could also provide the most fun food items as direct objects: je mange du pain, tu manges un pamplemousse, elle mange du yaourt, nous mangeons des croissants...
• taking my roommate’s decision to go to bed early as an opportunity to hang the PVA panoramic picture up on the wall
• mentally putting an overzealous lit classmate in her place when she mispronounced the city “Bath”
• emailing last year’s English teacher to tell him of the satisfaction I found in knowing how to pronounce “Bath” as the locals do
• using downtime in my piano lesson to scan the walls for pithy posters. I’ll leave you with the text from one of my favorites:

The Senility Prayer
Grant me the senility to forget the people I never liked anyway, 

the good fortune to run into the ones I do, 

and the eyesight to tell the difference.

It'll be a good year.