I'm Terrible at Titles

Um.  Did I mention I'm not very good at blogging during the school year?  Well... yeah.  It's a definite failing in my character.  Or something.

At any rate, I've been keeping exceedingly busy already.  It's full steam ahead on my senior recital music (which doubles as grad school audition music, and competition repertoire...)  I've got 18 credit hours again this semester, which is probably crazy - but I'm always crazy.  I don't know how to attempt a *reasonable* amount of work, I think!

Most of all, I'm up to my ears in grad school research.  I started out with a list of about 12 schools - which expanded to 15 - and I'm trying to whittle it down to about 3 or 4 at which I'll actually apply and audition.  I've spent countless hours already going through their websites, jotting down notes on their course of study, price of tuition, cost of living, availability of scholarships, etc.  It's a lot of information even about one school, and when you make it 12 or 15 it's a bit overwhelming.

I've worked it down to about 6 schools that I really like and think I'd be happy at.  Of course (this always happens to me!) they are almost all both the really expensive and the extremely prestigious (and therefore HARD to get into) schools.  Places like Juilliard.  Curtis.  Northwestern.  Boston Conservatory.  Guildhall. And while my teacher seems fairly confident that I'd be accepted at most if not all of them, I'm finding I have self-confidence issues.  Just because I've done well in undergraduate school (at a tiny Baptist college) doesn't mean I have any right to think I'm good enough to get into the best schools in the nation - nay, the world!  I realise that if I don't believe I have a chance, then I won't have a chance - confidence is everything in the performing world.  And yet I've spent my whole life trying to be humble, to keep my opinion of myself and my ego within bounds.  So I'm struggling a bit on this.

I may not be blogging much in the next few months; in addition to my coursework, I'll be filling out applications, recording audition CDs to send off, preparing for my recital, for a competition, for a couple of master classes, and writing a massive research paper I'm hoping to present at a conference and my school's Scholarship Symposium in the spring.  So I'll be swamped!  I hope to pop in now and then with updates and maybe a funny story and a photo or two, but don't expect any more novel-length posts until Christmas :-)

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