I Love My School!

So I went into the music faculty today after my shift up the hill and had a few good visits with some of the admin people. Turns out that the Board of Governors is really feeling pressured to amend their 10-year contingency master plan to include a recital hall. YES! YES! YES! There are already a few potential million-dollar donors ready to put for the dough when asked by the right people. In short, it's looking more & more likely that we will have a recital hall built within the next 10 years. If all the cards play out in the most ideal manner, it could be as soon as two years. Yahoo!

I also spent some time visiting my professor to arrange for a lesson time this coming year and wound up leaving with a fantastic job opportunity. It looks like I will be writing for the committee that is creating a proposal to the Government for the faculty to be approved for doctoral studies. They're hoping to add a Doctoral of Musical Arts programme for all three instrument fields as well, which is a nice improvement from the last time I heard about this proposal kicking around for strings, voice, and piano only (no woodwinds, brass, nor percussion). Theoretically this could be approved in time for me to stay or come back and do my doctorate so that is a cool bonus. I am a little bit worried that this might take up too much of my time, but there's only one way to find out, and even if I only do it for a few months, it's still amazing experience to have worked on a proposal.

I also learned from Jim that I will be having 8 fellow bassoonists this coming year. This is good news as eight allows for a lighter playing load for the upper years, including myself, because we won't have to double in any ensembles (doesn't mean some of us won't anyways). Typically there would be two in the symphonic band, two or three in wind ensemble, and three or four in orchestra. I have committed to learning to play the contrabassoon this year so I wouldn't be surprised if that meant that I had to play that in Wind Ensemble and bassoon in Orchestra. That's four more hours per week if it works out that way so let's pray that someone else will play contra in Wind Ensemble so I can stick just with the Orchestra rehearsals.

After meeting with Jim, I went to meet Sophie who is now the co-chair of the Performance Department. I am very thankful that Jim decided to give over some of his work to her otherwise I know that the quality of the bassoons' lives would suffer... if he kept up with what he had originally intended to do, he'd be working the equivalent of three or four full-time faculty members. Between making Sophie co-chair and giving the chamber orchestra directorship to Len, now he's probably only sitting at around 2.5 :)

He also asked, "So how's your love life?" Now to 90% of you this would seem totally out of line, but he is quite more than a teacher to me, perhaps mentor would be a better term, and we do talk about these things (for instance, he is ecstatic that he is about to become a grandfather for the second time to yet another mocha-baby :)). If it is any consolation to those of you who think this question is totally inappropriate, he did follow it with something like, "And you know I can't really ask you that so you don't really have to answer that." :P Haha he's great! Anyhoo, for those of you who also desire to know my answer to that question, I said something fairly non-chalante that I'm still talking to that engineering boy & then told him my fun pick-up stories from Deb's wedding on Saturday... In all fairness, this was a pretty bad answer in that I haven't talked to the eng guy in quite a while and the relationship side of things didn't really leave off on a promising note. I suppose it is easier to tell people that there might be something on the horizon with someone than to just say that there's nothing... I don't appreciate the pity looks when/if I say that there's no one that I'm interested in at the moment... which is more of the honest truth than the original answer I gave... I'm actually more content with being single these days than I think I ever have been! It is definitely a work of the Lord too because I should be feeling the loneliness factor now that something like over twelve of my friends (I've long since lost track) have either got engaged or married in recent months (Ryan & Ashley, Ben & Jen, Mike & Tandy, Murph & Nicole, Sarah & Chuck, Tim & Vanessa, Patrick & Cheryl [insert list of names escaping me now here]). Last night at Mike & Tandy's party, a lot of them were talking about wedding plans and honeymoon ideas and I definitely could have been feeling upset that I was not part of it, but instead I had a very fun attitude about it and couldn't keep myself from laughing out loud at the absurdity of it all; my how times change so quickly!

Anyhow, I signed up for my audition time for the orchestra and chamber music (still have NO idea what type of group I want to be in) auditions when I was at the faculty today. They will be SEVEN days from now (Wed., Sept. 5th for all you fellow wind players)! Guess this means I really ought to go and spend some time practising and get off this devilish Internet. God-willing this sore throat I seem to be developing will not hamper my preparation efforts too much.

'Til next time...