Le (not so) Grand Finale

For my final project for SSS, I brought my actual diary into class (I'm not sure how clear I was on that). My diary was filled with photos from this year, the past, and various things that are important to me in one way or another.

The hardest part for my entire project was coming out officially about my doubts in being a music student, and my thoughts of transferring next year. This semester has been incredibly stressful, and getting that off of my chest was terrifying in itself, but therapeutic at the same time. Now that it's out, I don't feel it as this huge secret, more of common knowledge. 

I'm still not sure what my future will hold from here, but I'm hoping that music will continue to be important, no matter where I go or what I do. 

The Great Switch

One of the things I've noticed about Converse is that people love to complain, but are often too terrified to do anything about. Fear not, my fellow Connies, I have a solution to allow you to explore options and realize that the grass isn't always greener on the other side.

I call it "The Great Switch". The idea behind this is for people who are having problems with their major or with their roommates can switch for 2 weeks, so they can really see what it's like outside their little bubble. 

People who have declared a major, but are unsure if they've made the right decision can sign up for another major's classes for 2 weeks. For example, maybe a music major is thinking twice about her decision, and wants to explore in psychology because she thinks it'd be a lot easier. She could take all psychology classes for 2 weeks, and see what she thinks.

The same with someone who is having problems their roommate. They might think their roommate is a pain and would like to live with someone else, so for two weeks, they move in with another person.

Two things could come from this "Great Switch":

1) The person could realize that what they have now really isn't all that bad and come away from the experience with a new found appreciation for their life

2) Decide that the life they chose for the Switch is actually a life they prefer, and they could find a new major or roommate. 

I often here my CA tell us that everyone likes to complain, but never likes to do anything about it. The Great Switch would take away just a few more things for people to complain about. 

I feel like something like this would allow students to explore their options around campus a lot more than just being undeclared or trying different classes from semester to semester. 

The biggest benefit I could see coming out of this is music students can explore other options, so they don't feel trapped inside the music program. It'd be an easier way of weaving people out than to pile work on them. It also may help someone come up with a creative major, like music and studio art. 

Exploration of your options is a key part of college, and I feel that a Great Switch would make that exploration just a little easier. 

Rainbows, Sunshine, Happiness, and Various Things of that Nature

What is my "Rainbow Connection"? Well, let me think about that.
To be honest, I can't imagine myself outside of a school, which shouldn't be too difficult to believe, considering I've spent the last 13 years being a slave to the public institution, and just recently signed up for 4 more years of similar torture.
It's nearly impossible for me to imagine a "dream career", considering I have no idea what I want to do with my life, but I have a few ideas...
Option 1: College professor of music history or something in that ballpark.
By me saying "I want to be a college professor", that pretty much kills my "choose where I want to live" thing. I will live where a job is open, simple as that. If I could choose, I'd love to live in New York City. I love the idea of living in a big city with lots of excitement and opportunities, but with all of the people in New York who are just as good at what they do, if not better, than you are, that lowers your chances of success.
Option 2: Art therapist/special ed teacher.
Quick little background on this one, my mom is a special ed teacher, and I absolutely love working with those kids, and in my personal experience, I've seen that art is a great universal communicator, even for children with non-verbal autism. I've considered music therapy, considering how much I love music, but I've found that appreciating, understanding, and creating music takes some amount of education that many people lack. Far more people can make art than music.
If I were to do this, I don't care where I'd live, but I'd like to be working with elementary/middle school aged children. To prepare for this, I'd like to do a bit more exploring outside of the music school, and take a class on special education next term. Seeing my mom do her job has made me realize that special education is an extremely difficult job, but a rewarding one that takes creativity and thinking outside the box.
I'm young, a freshman in college; I don't know what I want to do with the rest of my life. I just know that I intend to continue my education after these four years, I just haven't figured out what to study. The way I see it, I'm a dandelion seed floating in the breeze just along for the ride, and where I land, I'll grow.

Dearest Darlingest Freshmeat

Pre-script: I honestly don't think I've been here nearly long enough to give anyone advice of college life, considering I'm still figuring everything out, but regardless, I shall try. Just take my advice with a grain of salt.

Hello there ladies! I know you've just about had it with people telling you how different and hard college is and at this point, you're one of two groups. Either you're absolutely scared out of your mind, or you think you've got it 100% figured out because you graduated high school with honors, how hard could it be?
Well, college isn't all that scary, but it's definitely not a walk in the park either. Coming in, I thought I could handle college no problem. I never really had to study much in high school, even with dual enrollment, and music up until then had been pretty basic. Well, I was wrong.
The very beginning of my first semester, I got behind quickly and was completely lost in lectures. I had no clue what was going on, but then a miracle occurred!: I got my act together and realized that there is a life outside of high school! A life that actually requires effort for you to succeed at it!
First things first: get sleep, for the love of God. For surface reasons, you're not going to want to wear makeup and dark circles under your eyes are NEVER sexy, but more seriously, you can't function properly with 5 hours of sleep. It just won't happen. Chances are you have 8:30 classes every morning, and will for the next year or so. Be aware of that, and remember that just because other ladies on your hall are out until 3am on school nights doesn't mean you should be too.
Quick little side note: MacGamut will take you an extra hour or so when your tired, and NO ONE wants more MacGamut!
On the same page as sleep, don't procrastinate. Procrastination creates a vicious cycle of misery and exhaustion. You procrastinate your paper, stay up until 4am writing it the night before it's due, fall asleep in class, learn nothing, fail test, and spend all of your time stressing over the class instead of doing your work. And repeat. Just get it done as soon as possible. That way the night before an assignment's due and everyone else is stressing out over it, you can smile in satisfaction, and relax for a few hours with a Cosmopolitan magazine and a Cook Out milkshake.
In conclusion, you are not in high school anymore. You actually have to work now, and your parents aren't here to make you do it. Just remember that you can always ask for help from us Bigs, because we've definitely been there, and are more the happy to help.
We wish you all the luck in the world, and don't worry, you will survive. :)

Le Late Blog Post on Time Management (because a draft is apparently different from a postt)

Prescript: How lovely is it that my blog post on time management is late? Perfection. Long story short, I wrote the post on Thursday after the lecture and apparently clicked save instead of post... Failure at existence.
Okay, onto the blog post!

Time management in college is proving to be difficult for me. Having been a product of the public institution, I'm used to being locked up in a building for 8 hours a day, 5 days a week, without a second of freedom. Homework and reading were a relief.
College is a whole other ball game: I have time to question my assignments and their relevance, and therefore, makes it feel more like a chore.
I still haven't quite gotten a hang of things yet, but so far my way of coping with getting everything done on time has been to keep a strict schedule.
Since most of my classes are done by 3pm, my afternoon and evenings are pretty free, giving me time to either get a week's worth of homework done, or for a Harry Potter movie marathon (I'm ashamed of the number of times the latter has won over common sense). My solution?: Get everything done before I eat dinner. That gives me both a time constraint and a reward.
It's simple, but has worked for me so far. That way, everything gets done, and I have plenty of time to practice and be a complete lazy bum.
Keep in mind, that time constraint doesn't include studying. I normally study right a couple of hours before bed because that's when my memory works the best.
I'm sorry for the short little blog post, but I consider this one pretty self explanatory without much room for elaboration.

Le Beginning of the Journey

Okay, let's get a few quickie basics out of the way before I begin to elaborate on my assignment. My name is Julia Pitts, I'm from Lexington, South Carolina, and I'm a freshman vocal performance major at Converse College (aka Connie Land).
I always knew I was going to go to college. Education's been pretty important to me my whole life, even though I've hated school with a deep burning passion for a long time. My mommy is an educator, and she's always pushed me to keep going through school and to continue, no matter how much it royally sucks.
I honestly wasn't sure what I wanted to do with my higher education until I realized in August of my senior year "Oh crap! Compulsory education ends in a few months!", so I honestly had no idea where to start. To be honest, I hadn't really considered music as a course of study until much later. The original plan was to be a history major (considering that was the only school subject I could tolerate at the time), and go on to be a high school history teacher.
By November,  I had applied to about 6 colleges, and hadn't heard back from a single one. I had the Converse application just sitting there on my desk, and it hadn't even been touched, I never considered it to be an option.
I've always know about Converse. I can remember driving by the campus when I was tiny and saying that there was where I wanted to go to college. As I got older, the idea of an all women's college obviously got less appealing as the boys lost their cooties and started to be interesting, and that attitude stuck with me through high school until my senior year.
January rolled around, and I still hadn't heard from any of my schools, so I finally caved and applied to Converse out of desperation (I mean, the application was free and all, so no harm, right?). Less than two weeks later and BAM!: acceptance letter. Kudos to Converse for that by the way, USC took over 6 months to send me anything.
Anyway, I told my choir conductor, Hal MacIntosh, that I had been accepted into Converse, and he told me about the Petrie School and how fabulous it was, and it brought up memories of when I was younger. At that age when everyone has their unrealistic dreams of being a princess or a football player, I wanted to be an opera singer. As I went through school and told people that, I had gotten laughed at so much that by high school, I had given up. Regardless, I thought it'd be worth an audition to see how unrealistic it really was.
Surprise! I got in! At this point though, I had offers into the history departments at every school I had applied to, including a full ride to the University of Alaska in Fairbanks. So I had a decision to make: go with something tolerable, or my dream. I took a leap of faith and sent in my deposit to Converse in April.
Alrighty, my ramble-y story of how all of this came to be is complete.
Real quick: I would most definitely be Miss Piggy because she is fabulous, as I would like to be. ^_^