[mood| Busy ]

Well, I can no longer complain about being bored and having nothing to do...because I'm finding myself completely swamped again, as expected for my college life! Things have been going pretty well and though I'm super busy and sometimes feel overwhelmed, I'm having a great time being back "home."



Classes - World Music, Instrumentation, Arts Management, and Swim Fitness. Nothing too exciting. Actually I find most of it to be pretty boring and uninteresting...but they are classes I have to take. It is quite the experience to swim at 7:45 in the morning, let me tell you. Thankfully it's only twice per week (Monday and Wednesday), but I do enjoy it. Swimming is my favorite form of exercise. I'm pretty sore though, because obviously I'm not really in shape. Well, I should be pretty soon here! That along with going for walks on the weekend and running all over campus during the week should keep my exercise going.

Saxophone stuff - Ah! My saxophone and I are practically joined at the hip this year. There is just tons to do. I have a new teacher for my sax lessons, and that's going to be pretty intense. I have lots of practicing and preparing to do for that each week, along with sax quartet twice per week, jazz band twice per week, band 3 times per week (and now I'm the section leader!), and teaching a saxophone lesson once each week. Plus all my practice times I can squeeze in there. Yay. I haven't actually really gotten into it yet because I'm just now figuring things out and finalizing my schedule, but it's all about to start up here. It's definitely what should keep me more busy than anything, because it's my major afterall. And I have a junior recital to plan for in the spring, as well as performing on various student recitals. So the sax should keep me pretty occupied! I just hope I can hang on for the ride.

Piano - I don't have nearly as much time for it this year. I was actually contemplating dropping my piano lessons for the rest of my time here, because I do have the 2-year piano requirement finished. But I decided to stick with it and just do it for fun. I couldn't bring myself to drop out. My heart keeps telling me not to give up on the piano. It would be pretty sad, considering that for quite awhile it was my principal instrument and I've been playing since I was 5 years old. So I'll keep going. I talked to my teacher here and she seems pretty understanding with how busy and stressed I usually am, and promised me that we'd keep it fun and stress-free. I'm all for that!

Working at the ASC - This year I'm an academic assistant and music tutor at the school's Academic Support Center and I have to work here 6 hours a week. That's where I am now, actually! This is my third day of work here and no one has stopped by yet to get help. That's understandable though, because it's still early in the year and things are rather slow as of yet. I expect that pretty soon, when midterms and other exams roll around, this place should get going in a hurry. And I'll be here, helping kids with their study habits/time management/etc. and/or music-specific problems. I'd much rather do the latter, so I'm hoping I get more tutoring time rather than general study skills time. I'm better at the music part...I'd say.

Church - My best friend and I are trying to find an off-campus church to attend on a regular basis this year, and that's going to be really nice. We also love listening to our Christian music and doing devotions every night!

Diet - Given my health situation over the summer, I've been trying to eat better for awhile. I cut pop out of my diet completely about 3 months ago, and now am only drinking milk, water, juice, and sparkling juice type things (Izze's, mmmm.) Also there's the occasional Italian soda and coffee drink, but not on a daily basis. I'm also making sure to have my daily servings of fruit and vegetables, protein, etc. It doesn't always work out, but I'm very conscious of it. I try to treat very little, but find it difficult to resist my cookie dough ice cream. ;-) But once in awhile that doesn't kill me. With everything else I'm doing better. I shop mostly at the health food store and buy health food items...healthy cereals, bread, crackers, chips, granola bars, drinks, etc. So that's going pretty well! And it's really neat because our room is right across from the kitchen in our dorm building, so we can cook whenever we want to! We make breakfast almost every morning, which is fun.

Finally, I come to my friends - even with all that's going on I'm 100% intent on making enough time for them! Specifically my best friend. Unlike last year, this year we happen to have pretty different schedules and don't see each other quite as much during the day as we'd like to, but we've done our best to arrange the flexible bits of our schedules in such a way that we can still spend as much time as possible and make the most out of that time. And now that we're living together it's been really great! I'm really enjoying our enormous, multi-sectioned room with the bathroom and the kitchen and laundry room right outside the door and of course, the wonderful company. It couldn't be better!

Oh, and shopping, watching movies, going out to dinner...when possible!!

Alright, well that's my update for now. I will update again as soon as I can, provided that I find some spare time! It's been rather difficult to do until now...so, we'll see!