Spring Break 2011

Spring Break crept up on me sooner than I thought. I know, the thought of Spring Break 'creeping up' is unfathomable... most teachers and students have been tracking it on the radar since Winter Break. I have so many projects in the works, I actually find myself wishing for more time between now and the end of the year, and Spring Break is sort of the "two minute warning" of the academic world.

Despite my promises, I pushed my skill assessments to the week after break. I suppose I should feel crappy about it, but the truth is that I worked my ass off last week. I had a couple of other big projects going, and I decided rather than stress myself out to get everything done before break, I should focus myself on one thing at a time, and use the break to regroup. That turned out to be a wise choice.

I also didn't make any promises to do a lot of school-related work over break. Instead, I got tons of home projects done, including a full house cleaning, setting up shelves in the garage (including two sets of hanging storage units), re-taping speaker wires underneath the railing in the living room (away from Maestro Jr.'s reach), reorganizing the man-cave... and somewhere in there I managed to take a trip to see my family in South City.

Here I am on the last Friday of break, looking at Monday looming on the horizon. Given all the work I've done in the last two weeks, I don't feel particularly depressed - but I do feel increasing pressure to deliver on my promises. My plan is to devote all of tomorrow afternoon to preparing for the assessments this week. Hopefully, that will be enough time. Technically, I have until Wednesday of next week, since I'm not scheduled to start auditioning until then, but I'd rather not wait until the 11th hour. Besides, I have another joint-district project happening on Tuesday evening - I need to get the planning done before then so that I'm not trying to worry about two things at once (like last week).

Tomorrow I need to finalize my audition sheet. I plan on incorporating the standard categories that I usually employ in auditions: Basics (posture, hand position and embouchure), Rhythm, Tone and Nuance. Eventually I will incorporate scales, but for now, I'm just going to use a prepared selection (from the current repertoire) and two levels of sight-reading (which will probably take up the bulk of the preparation).

Tally-Ho!