-Ramen noodles really aren't that bad, are they?

No. No they aren't. Besides, the price is right.

-What are the five things you most regret in life?

Shouldn't that be a question on the Friday Five? Perhaps. Anyway, let's see. I regret not accepting the place on the newborn middle school field hockey team that was handed to me in 8th grade, before the fateful soccer tryout. I sucked at soccer, that is true, but I had fun with it and didn't want to quit. Looking back now I don't think I liked the sport so much as the general camaraderie of being on a team and whatnot. At the time, of course, I didn't understand it. So I then proceeded to become bitter and subsequently dislike all organized sports and the people that played them in high school. See, the preps played sports. The preps were popular. I wanted to be popular! So sue me!

*deep breath*

Er, I obviously also regret being cut from the goddamn middle school soccer team having made me so stupidly bitter, even ten years later.

Anyway, I regret not filling out those applications for Princeton and Cornell just for shits and giggles. It is quite an eye-opener going from being THE smart one in elementary and middle school to being not quite so smart. School was something I was unquestionably good at. By the end of high school, three others were just better at it then me, including Miss Slutty McValedictorian who swiped all the scholarships she didn't need to go to a smart people school which shall remain nameless. She also had a tendency to swipe seemingly decent guys you knew since elementary school and do naughty things with them on school-sponsored trips. With three other people in the room, or so the story goes!

I regret taking that pointless year off between college and grad school. But I think you knew that.

And there's just one other small regret, but, well, that's not important.

-Why have you stuck around diaryland for over a year? Your buddylist has gone through many different incarnations, because people tend to drop their diaries like flies, or, um, fly-infested diaries. Or something.

That is an excellent question. First and foremost, I write garbage here either because I am bored, or I should probably be doing something else. Or both. If you get past 95% of the meaningless drivel, diaries are like captain's logs, and a life is like an ocean journey, from Depressed Unemployed Loser Inlet to Loser Shoe Schmuck Sea to Graduate Student Ocean.

-You just watched "The Matrix: Reloaded" didn't you? I guess that explains the sudden mindless philosophizing.

I guess it does. I still haven't seen "Revolutions". I know its supposed to suck. That's too bad. Anyway, what was it the Oracle told Neo about it not being so much about making the choice as understanding the choice? I think this is quickly leading to another pertinent question.

-Indeed. Is it true you had a bit of an apostrophe a few days ago?

I did. I might even call this a revelation if I ever give in and believe in it. It's mostly because of Other Flute Graduate Student. She plays so effortlessly, and speaks of all these competitions and things she's won like they were nothing (and she actually attended as an undergraduate one of the schools I auditioned at for grad school).

I dunno. Maybe things are different when maybe you have roommates to split rent with, but you also have a car (and payments, and gas, etc.) to pay for. $500 would be like manna from heaven right now (here is where I might once again preach that you should go to grad school IN-STATE and get an ASSISTANTSHIP because excess loan funds do JACK SHIT and you'll be paying them off for the REST OF YOUR LIFE anyway).

But that is besides the point. The point is, I remembered that school is what I was always good at. As much as I complained about ethnomusicology this semester, looking back on it, I really did enjoy it. I complain about writing because of my tendency towards procrastination. But, when I put my mind to it, I can write fairly intelligently. So, *deep breath* should I forget the performance degree, and go for a musicology one instead?

BAM.

(Did you have a revelation/apostrophe like that too, Dr. Jenny?)

Wait a minute. I remember the exact day when I fell in love with the flute. It was during a spring day in fourth grade, when the assembled elementary school was watching the fifth grade band perform. I looked at the flute player who was sitting on the end of the first row, and decided that looked really cool. I wanted to play flute.

I picked it up as easily as I could, given a public school music education (not like the kids around here who have to have idiots like me teach them private lessons just to get by -and- how the fuck can they afford it anyway!?). My middle school band director called me the best flute player ever to pass through that school, and I sopped up the praise and attention like the last chocolaty dregs in a glass of chocolate milk (nice metaphor, eh?). These glories extended into high school. The band director there picked his two biggest show-offy, future music major students and gave them solo pieces to do with the wind ensemble at the last concert. He gave a pretty, lyrical piece to a saxophonist, and he let a little flute player play "Flight of the Bumblebee".

But see, people in college laugh at you when you say you played that. People like Bitchy McEvil. Music school can be tough like that. You go from being the star of your high school, to just another flute player with a negligible private lesson background and a piece of crap flute.

(Would that I was born an only child whose parents had lots of money.... like Slutty McValedictorian?)

Anyway, time to get in line for the self-esteem roller coaster. I craved challenge. I got crap band. I didn't practice (really) until I got into orchestra by accident junior year. We played hard-ass music on the first concert and I was scared shitless. But I did fairly well. I brushed off the first words Bitchy McEvil said to me after the concert ("You missed the high B!").

THAT was what I wanted to do when I grew up. Play in an orchestra. Bitchy McEvil found that hilarious. ("You really should think about the medical field. There are so many jobs for nurses right now.") Being the good little, listen-to-your-elders type of girl, I began to have doubts. But I auditioned at three good grad schools just for the Detroit of it, and got in. But I didn't go.

Enter Life's Biggest Regret #4.

But now I'm here. I'm surrounded by talented freshmen whose instruments probably cost eight times what mine did (and that was when it was new seven years ago). I'm teaching a high schooler who is going to become one of those talented freshmen one day. I listen to Other Flute Graduate Student's doubts about getting a job when she graduates, and I laugh to myself at them. Maybe I deluded myself into thinking that a master's degree in flute performance was going to magically make me a better player, the type that just walks into an orchestral audition and owns it. Well, I never ever said I wasn't sheltered and naive. I should have applied to the University of Life. Really. ;)

Ah well. Half a year of graduate school and I'm ready to give up on my wildest, craziest dream, to be paid, yes PAID, to be in an orchestra and get so lost into the music of Beethoven 9 that it just oozes out your very pores, and you don't know where the boundaries are between that silly little thing you call a "self" and the great amazing wonder fit into a little word called "music"? I want to give that up to be a bookworm and write obscure articles and papers on things like Ukrainian folk songs or the use of the crumhorn in medieval music or the use of the flute as an obbligato instrument in the sacred works of Johann Sebastian Bach?

Revelations are serious things that you should believe. Apostrophes aren't. People think that because I'm so outwardly quiet, that automatically makes me serious as well. Probably not. But that's what I'm trying to figure out.

-So enough of that nonsense. Does "Nice shoes wanna fuck?" work as a pickup line on guys? What is that about the size of a guys feet as relative to the size of, er, other things...? You sold shoes, you should know.

No comment.

-Anyway, what did you do last night?

Sangria and Taboo (the game) at Other Flute Graduate Student's house. I was not overtly impressed with either. I am too Ukrainian to be impressed with wine, I think. Bring on the vodka! At any rate, the only unfortunate thing about that shindig was the lack of lobster material. I may have referred to the two main branches of the Tripartite Theory as to why there are no good guys in Gradschoolville before (they are either married/engaged/practically married or engaged or gay).

-Why in the name of God/Buddha/Allah/Mother Nature/R2D2/Bill Clinton/Ben & Jerry do you still believe in lobsters?

I believe in lobsters because I trust the writers of Friends will end the show the right way, with Rachel ending up with Ross. Yes. All the taken music geeks with their tongues down each other's throats are real life proof of this. Music geeks can be happy too! Angsty, certainly, but happy! With a lobster!

Does that mean I equate happiness to being in a relationship?

NO! Nor does it mean I think everyone should go run out and get married

Does it mean I know a goddamn thing about lobsters anyway?

NO! I only had just the one crayfish in tenth grade, now didn't I?

I believe in lobsters because I never went to the University of Life. I have read too many books and seen too many movies where two people fall in love and live happily ever after. The stories that don't make the books, well, maybe they don't find their lobster. Maybe I should find that really depressing.

But, since I'm a simple stupid naive little person, I find some degree of comfort in the fact that the ocean is full of lobsters. There is both a yin and a yang. There are brownie and cookie dough ice creams in Half Baked. Chili and hot dogs. Laundry and a newspaper on Sunday morning. The first snow of the year and that giddy childlike desire to run outside and catch snowflakes on your tongue. The list goes on and on.

All these things, like an individual, are perfectly lovely on their own. But together, they're pretty nice too. :)

-Is this a diary entry, or a mini-autobiography?

Both.

-Do you really think anyone read this far?

No.

-You really want a chili dog now, don't you?

Maybe. But I would settle for Chili's Happy Hour and a mango margarita. :)

Have a splendiferous evening all, and thank you for reading. It means a lot. :)

*BIG GIANT MANGO HUGS*

(My Mangofarmer has a first name, it's S-A-R-A-H, my Mangofarmer has a second name it's None of your beeswax! Mangofarmer has a way with being a big geek all day!)

8 comments

previous - next

Designed by georgedorn and provided by Positronic Design.
Grab your own copy here.