Getting Away (Thursday’s Journal)

All the work I did at ProMusica today was very tedious. I compiled five or so spreadsheets of contacts and finished Ashley's restaurant list. There were a little over 200 people on the final master spreadsheet. Yesterday, I had pasted all but one of the original spreadsheets into a new, complete one, so I got to find and delete duplicates today. Early on, I looked at the number at the bottom where the last name was. I think it was close to 280. I was kind of overwhelmed for a moment. It was going to be a lot to sort through. It was a lot to sort through.

Julia is taking next week off, so I will probably end up exploring what other people around here do some. Either that, or I'll waste a lot of time. Still, my evil plan—it's been approved actually—is to come to school on Wednesday to promote both ProMusica's next concert and the open SAB meeting on the 3^rd. I'm choosing Wednesday because it's town meeting, but I have some other reasons too. Perhaps most significant, because I won't be able to drive to school regardless and will have to get up early enough to catch a bus, I may as well do this the day I had to get up early anyway. Wednesday is also the only day I wouldn't go to band… and now I can. Plus, the choir accompanist-type-person (not sure exactly how to explain this) comes in M-W-F and his being there pretty much guarantees a real rehearsal.

As I ponder this I realize that even though, or rather because, my plan for Wednesday is a diabolical plot to further my own purposes—not that I won't further ProMusica's either—I find the whole thing kind of uncomfortable. There's a bittersweet feeling to walking into Linworth anymore, because I feel as if I should really be somewhere else. It's strange—I don't feel this way at Kilbourne so much. I guess it's because at Linworth, the people around me think I should be somewhere else. Not that I ever hear "what are you doing here?!" except when someone is pleased to see me, but in band, most people don't even realize I have any reason to be elsewhere. Well, I guess they do since I'm missing so often. I hear that the directors fairly regularly have "oh no, we can't rehearse this without the oboe part" moments. Still, that maintains the expectation that I should be around most of the time.

Then again, my attitude toward band has also changed. I don't think this was an abrupt occurrence that began at walkabout, but something that has been haunting me for a while. There's just a growing cynicism that is getting harder and harder to fight off. I guess what it comes down to is that I don't actually feel comfortable at WK either, but the pressure to be elsewhere is more subtle, and manifests itself obliquely. This is why I need to leave: I don't really belong here anymore. I can blend in just fine, but I don't quite fit. It's tempting, oh so tempting, to find ways to appear in familiar places, but the experience only seems positive on the surface. There's something not quite right just below.

Blogger Comment Problems

I've been having some problems with comments on blogger lately and today I even had issues on my own blog. :( If you can comment, please do. (I'd also love to know who is reading this. =D) If you've had problems in the past say so too, although I don't know what to do about it. Umm, so if you have suggestions for me, assuming you can comment at all, that'd be cool too.

As I Surrender Unto Sleep

Before I post up my Thursday journal or even start to contemplate writing about the two auditions I just finished today and yesterday, I would like to talk about sleep. Utne Reader did an article about sleep loss recently that I read in the hotel last night, and I realized that I have a fair bit to say on this topic. In fact, I've started to plan a whole cycle of blogs on the issue. So let's talk about sleep.

"The evening hangs beneath the moon/a silver thread on darkened dune…"/with crossing eyes and nodding head/I fear that sleep will take me soon.

What is it that makes modern American culture so badly disposed to rest? As a teen, I must speak specifically to and of teens, but Utne's article made me realize the problem is more widespread. We live in a mechanized world where everything can go and go and go nonstop, so guilt seizes us when we take a break or slip into daydream. We cheat ourselves of sleep, trying to get still more work done when our bodies scream at us to stop. Instead of listening, we fill ourselved with caffeine, take shots of ginseng, and eventually catch Z's at completely inappropriate times because at last we cannot stay awake any longer.

It's sad, I know people who boast of their sleep deprivation—I have been among them. Indeed, I find that one of the easiest ways to find common sympathy with someone I've never met is to comment on how tired I am. We can complain together for a considerable length of time and in fact may be able to think of little else. But students take on all kinds of activities, work jobs, and then try to do homework on top of it. Then there's that pesky part where we actually have to get to school. Generally accepted among high-caliber students is the simple fact that sleep is simply secondary to everything else we must do. Somewhere along the line, priorities have been misplaced and confused and this rather terrifying phenomenon is enforced by THE SYSTEM. Anyone who regularly goes to bed before 11:00 is probably a filthy slacker. Sure enough, no one maintains that kind of sleep schedule and succeeds in the full course load of AP and enriched classes that make up the religion of a certain brand of student, a religion to which I have never fully been able to give up myself.

This attitude does not mean that we have not been told many a time how much sleep we "should" get, but we only smirk disdainfully at these numbers. How do you expect, Mrs. Useless Health Teacher, us to find the time to do that? What a notion! And truly, to point your finger and say, "you aren't getting enough sleep!" is utterly pointless: we know! You may as well tell the woman who has had a tracheotomy that it's not healthy to smoke through the hole in her neck. Oh sure, identifying the problem is the first step to solving it, but much more telling than any scientific studies are the very real symptoms we fight off every day.

Then again, I don't think students really appreciate the harm we're doing to ourselves. I'd like to point out a couple tidbits, one from the Utne article and another from a psychiatrist who spoke to my health class about drugs. The psychiatrist explained at one point that sleep is when information is moved from short-term to long-term memory. For me, that was a powerful piece of news. Who would have thought that sleeping might actually do just as much good, if not more, than studying? Think about it—a friend of mine notorious for working herself past human limits continually trumpets her inability to memorize information. Your short-term memory can only hold so much information. If you want something to stay learned, you're going to have to sleep.

The second point didn't actually particularly surprise me—I've long wondered if that weren't partially true—although I should say as a disclaimer that it's still in the "scientists think" stage as opposed to "scientists have found" or "scientists now know." But it turns out that depression may be a symptom of sleep deprivation instead of depression causing sleep loss. The implications of this are striking. After all, depression is a huge problem in teens right now, without guarantee of successful treatment and a deadly streak. As a society, we can't take that information too seriously. It is a sign that the entire attitude of our culture towards sleep and rest needs a giant shift.

Call Me a Liar

Justin Locke's post yesterday about music education yesterday had me doing some thinking, because in some ways, I strongly agree, but on the other hand I disagree. So torn am I, that I am writing a blog and not a comment. What's more, I've been meaning to maybe interact with the larger internet more on this blog but haven't really until now. So are you ready? Let's go!

The Inherent Value of the Arts

Let me start at the end, for this is where I am in agreement. When all is said and done, I know that the real reason to support the arts, whether I'm referring to education or to organizations, or anything at all, the real reason I am doing so is for that art for its own sake. This point is all the more important because I also feel that this kind of defense of the arts, particularly in education, gets neglected. It's as if we think either that no one else sees the value of beauty, or that we assume that it doesn't need to be pointed out. Maybe the problem is simply trying to articulate this power of art without just demonstrating it. I don't know, but I think this is something that cannot be under-emphasized. I also suspect that this is the real reason why arts education advocates do what they do. And this is where I disagree with Justin Locke, for all that the arguments used may sometimes be hollow, I really don't think it's all about making a buck. Yes, it's a business, but that doesn't mean advocacy for arts education is driven by money. I could be naïve, but I don't think so. (Well, I wouldn't, would I?) The problem, I feel, is much more likely to relate to ignorance than sleeziness in the majority of cases.

Connection to Academics

If I really wanted to make a valid point here, I would actually visit the link to the OSU study Justin referenced. Instead, I will argue with my own private experience, which is of course very subjective and easily dismissed as meaningless. I would like to say, however, that researching with identical twins is not the only way to find the kinds of trends like "arts education increases academic achievement." You just need a large sampling of diverse people. Also, the phrase is "arts education," not "arts exposure." One might put the word "formal" in brackets, because we can easily infer that anyone making this argument is saying that sitting down with a teacher and being instructed about arts in this way or that, either in creation or appreciation, is what apparently increases academic achievement. That sounds like a very stiff and snobby way of looking at how one should approach the arts, but I'm not trying to say what "arts education" should or shouldn't be. All I'm saying is that completely cutting off a child from anything artistic or creative would be much more extreme than any case study on this subject would call for.

I also dislike the example face-off of American-Idol finalists and super-geeks. I could go back to my definition of "arts education" and question the choice challengers on the "arts" side, but more important and to the point, I would double-check how likely it is that the super-geeks wouldn't belong on that side also. My best geek friend happens to play violin. Coincidence? Could be. I also observed last year that all the seniors in my music theory class made either commended scholar or semi-finalist on the PSAT/NMSQT competition. That's still a pretty small pool, but I tend to trust the implications.

Blurring the Lines and Bending the Rules

I mentioned music theory. Is that art or academic? Is English an art class? Clearly literature is art, but no one needs to debate whether or not reading is an "academic" subject. One of my classes got into a discussion this year in what exactly the difference is between art and science. Art, which we think of as synthesis, require analysis. Science, which we think of as analysis, requires and leads to synthesis. Science turns into art, art leads to science. They are intertwined.

Of course, I am now stretching the boundaries of both art and science in the field of academia. Perhaps that's a good thing though. Education could stand to open de-compartmentalize a bit. In the end, everything is connected to everything else. And that is the inherent value of art: it is a piece of the greater whole of culture and technology.

Froggies Rock, Just So's You Know

I started the day cursing Wednesdays; the day I have to leave extra early and don’t even get to go to band. Because I go downtown with my dad, I get to the office a good fifteen minutes before I officially say I will, and Julia doesn’t arrive until later than that. Today when I went up to the office no one was there yet so I decided to go downstairs to the little café on the first floor and wait.

My day turned around when I bought myself hot chocolate. I’m going to stop complaining about Wednesdays. Simple things make all the difference I guess. When Arianne got there and opened the office I still didn’t really have much to do yet, but I worked some on Ashley’s restaurant list.
Most of my day was spent on the SAB silent auction, but on research. Fun research. When Katie and I originally compiled the list, it was kind of uncertain whether we were talking about a raffle or silent auction or door prizes, or what. Linworth’s rubber ducks at the international dinner came to mind (aren’t these some kind of tradition? I’d love to know how that came along.) and I suggested we come up with something “silly/cute/random/creative/cheap.” (I believe that’s how it got listed on the bottom of the spreadsheet under “vague, unspecific ideas) So I got to try to come up with something. I spent most of this time browsing orientaltrader.com, which has a fun selection but some eighty-seven things per page and, once again, I was shored up by slow computers. Yvette came in today, so I couldn’t steal the “good” computer either. I eventually came up with a few things, and Julia was really enthusiastic about these light-up squishy frogs. Apparently, there’s a history of frog-related… stuff… at ProMusica because of some musician, so the frogs were fitting as well as being cute and kind of cool. (I mean, they light up!) Julia thought that we should get three dozen, (Oriental Traders sells pretty much everything in dozens and for cheaps) have all the musicians sign one, and raffle them off. Problem was, Oriental Traders has ratings and reviews of their products on their website, and the “quality” rating for the light-up frogs was really low. I read some customer reviews and they said that only about half the frogs actually lit up. So I browsed the website again, this time on Julia’s laptop, searching for frogs. We decided to get these squirt frogs. They aren’t as cute as the light-up frogs, but they were cheaper—Julia’s just going to buy them—and had good customer ratings.

The only other thing I put much time into was “pencil research.” A few SAB members, Julia, and Ashley had a meeting last night about marketing the student gala. One of the suggestions made in regards to marketing at the SAB meeting two weeks ago was that we have pencils printed for the gala to advertise it. Apparently this came up last night and Ashley said it was a waste of time to look into. Julia disagreed, and I’m thinking it could actually be a really cool idea now. Music students have this way of showing up to class without a pencil, and music directors, in turn, tend to become very frustrated by this tendency. You see, if a change in the music, or a correction of style, is going to stay fixed, students really need to mark this in the music. WK’s wind ensemble has been blown up at a few times over this issue. So imagine, we give orchestra directors 100 pencils that they can give to their students to use in class to make the music better. The pencils advertise our student gala and bored cellists read them while the director is rehearsing a section with the violins. I think it’s a good idea. So, I explored the internet to see how much this would be likely to actually cost, going over Ashley’s head. I think that little amusing detail made the internet explorations all the more fun.

As far as “sit in front of a computer all day” days go, today was probably my favorite. Obviously, I’m happy not to have to make phone calls, although I did make a couple, but I was also happier than when I was compiling spreadsheets or whatever else I’ve done. It was just kind of amusing looking at all the toys and things I could buy online, and different from what I had been doing before. Tomorrow there will be more spreadsheets. The last thing I did was start compiling several lists of contacts into one for a mailing list for the student gala. I have a feeling that’s going to take a while.

Computers are SLOW

Monday nothing all too exciting happened, so I hereby reserve the right to skip on to Tuesday. (Yeah, Monday is what the "this is the purpose of journaling" bs was about. I'll write about what exactly I reflected on later maybes, but I want to sort some things out first. (: I'm holding you in suspense!)

Anyway, I've done some thinking about what I said about computers and internet before, and it hasn't remotely been a problem since then. I still sit in front of a computer the whole day, but I haven't tried to use them for things other than work. I haven't even really thought about it. Yes, at home I still can't get anything done until I've gone through a certain routine, but that's home and it's different I guess. I imagine that I have free time at home. Is that true? Well, I could stand to go to bed earlier.

I think just writing all that out helped straighten things out in my mind or something. The problem was not that I had nothing to do (I'm good at finding things to do) but that I didn't want to do what I was doing combined with the fact that I felt like what I was doing shouldn't have taken nearly so much time. Surely, somehow, time was being wasted.

Today Ashley (marketing) needed help researching contacts for a list of restaurants and she told me to go find and watch a video by Artzine at WOSU on ProMusica's work with Peter Shickelie and CCAD on this performance of a piece based off James Thurber's dogs and CCAD's animation of the drawings to fit the music. The point was to have me take a break because she realized that I'd been spending so much time doing that kind of work and felt bad. But I realized something. I have not yet thoroughly appreciated the true slowness of ProMusica's computers. This was a four minute video. I opened it and could at first only view 5 seconds and had to wait for the rest to load. So I worked on the restaurant contacts. I accidentally closed the window with the video and decided to let it load and use a different computer because to that point everything had been crawling.

Thirty minutes later, I came back and the video still had twenty, maybe thirty seconds left to load. I decided it would probably be done by the time I got to that part of the video if I started to play it. I got through everything but the last ten seconds. The computer still wasn't done.

So I am blessed with patience in that I don't mind waiting for computers to crawl along. But that is what was taking so much time when I was finding contacts and making calls. I found that it took me about the same amount of time to get through the contacts without calling as it had when I was making calls. It's just that before when that seemed outrageous I blamed it on myself somehow procrastinating and avoiding the task. Not to say I didn't at all—many of these restaurants had irritatingly flashy websites and probably took longer to load than many others I've been to lately. But in general, the problem was that I was on edge and was finding things to scare myself with.

A new problem I've observed is that there are snacky things lying around the office that I have been invited to help myself to if I wish. Well, this is another great way to avoid doing something for at least a couple seconds… except not really. The reasons why that could get problematic should be fairly obvious. Then there's just the part where if you walk by a box of cookies, and they're there and you can take one… it's very inviting. I'm pretty sure I have enough will-power to deal with this one though.

This is Fo' Realz!

On Friday, Katie and I basically finished up with finding and making contacts for the student gala silent auction. That was really refreshing. Cassie (Julia’s former intern and SAB chair) came in and she was really relieved to see all the work that we had done. (Mostly me!) Technically, other SAB-ers are supposed to have been contacting businesses to sponsor the gala or make silent auction donations. Thing is, there’s no guarantee that this will actually happen. It could yet, and I won’t speak ill of anyone. But so far as we know, no one else has yet. I think this was the first time I truly felt good about what I had been doing. It put new determination in me to actually finish making calls.

Saturday, I went around picking up a few items for the silent auction from businesses. That was an adventure because I did actually manage to get lost. This was the weekend of learning to drive independently. For all that I’ve had my license for over a year, I haven’t really used it for more than minor things like going to music lessons. I really don’t know my way around once you leave a… very small radius of my house. Not sure what that would be exactly. So on Friday I drove home by myself and learned that even though Worthington is North of downtown (I was so pleased with myself for not getting on 71 south even though it looked like where I thought I should get on the highway), 70 is South of where I was, so if I wanted to take 71 to 70 to 315, I wanted to get on 71 South. Figured, I always thought my weakness was landmarks even though I have a good instinct for orientation, but in this case I would have been golden had I trusted my landmark recognition and ignored the knowledge that I was “going the wrong way.”

Then, on Saturday, when I wanted to go to Polaris (among other places) my dad told my to take High St to Powel Road (my mom later couldn’t understand why he hadn’t told me to take the highway). Powel Road wasn’t really marked so I drove past it, tried to turn around and ended up on Powel Road going West (wrong direction) with nowhere (nowhere!) to turn around. So I never got to Polaris. I’m not sure when I will. I felt pretty proud of myself picking up the silent auction items though. It made the phone calls feel real and purposeful, and it was just cool to see plans that actually affect real life carry themselves out. Overall, I was rather pleased.