I'm jealous of people who can keep up with their extra-curricular passions even after coming to IMSA. With all the workload, it always seems like there's "not enough time" for anything anymore, especially those that involve a significant time commitment like music or sports. I know there technically is no such thing as not having enough time, because it all depends on your priorities - if something is important enough to you, you will make time for it. So I guess for me, academics is my top priority, seeing as I almost completely gave up music just to maintain my grades. I mean, sure, I'm in the school orchestra, but that says nothing - the program here does not help me grow as a musician at all. And yes, I'm involved in a youth orchestra that has rehearsals every weekend - but that just means I go to rehearsal and learn to be a good sight-reader because I never "have time" to practice during the week. I even still take private lessons, but because I don't practice, I improve at an incredibly slow rate. So overall, my musical skills at this point are stagnating, all because I constantly blow off practice time to give myself that extra hour to work on a paper or project.
I miss those days when I practiced at least an hour and a half every day and looked forward to orchestra class and working with my chamber ensemble at school. I miss being able to impress my private lesson teacher with the progress I make every week. I miss being the best violinist in my grade level at school, despite that I only started learning in 5th grade, because I practiced so much, and I miss being a musical inspiration for others. Freshman year, I was good enough to go to IMEA All-State. But sophomore year, I apparently wasn't even good enough to make district. For some reason, coming to IMSA completely changed around my priorities, to the extent where it's okay to never practice. I remember that back then, I couldn't skip more than a day of practicing. Maybe it's because the music program no longer pushes me to work hard. Maybe the orchestra teacher at my home school was just an incredibly inspirational person and had a contagious passion for music, but here there is nothing.
Wednesday, May 16, 2012
Coming and going
Last night, as I was sitting in my sophomore's room having another typical girl talk, we touched on the subject of relationships. As she stressed out more and more about her situation, I showed her WongFu Productions' short film, "Strangers Again." The film describes the different stages of a relationship, from meeting to breaking up, with an emphasis on how, after the last stage, the two people are back to how they started, as strangers.
This made me think about, not only boyfriend-girlfriend relationships and the consequences of friend-zoning, but also about the general people relationships: between friends, peers, co-workers. So many people pass through our lives, some staying for only a few hours, some over several years, and then those rare people who, with a little luck, have been there for almost your whole lifetime. In the moment, you always imagine someone to be there forever - you say that you will be "best friends forever" with your closest friend, or you say you will always love your significant other. But before you know it, the person you claimed to be your BFF has a new group of friends, and you get closer to another group, and you drift more and more until, like boy-girl relationships, you become strangers again. I think about my friends back at home, and find it hard to believe that only two years ago, I had talked to these people every day and we had laughed together, teased each other about boys, acted like music nerds together, and suffered through classes together. Now, we don't talk at all, and if we do it's if we by chance see each other when I go home on the weekend. We talk about needing to hang out and catch up soon, but it never happens. Things are just never the same anymore.
Even without distance as a factor, at IMSA I have drifted from quite a few people. Sometimes, all it takes is having once class in common to grow closer to someone, but when you don't have any classes, or even if you don't live in the same hall, you almost never see each other and begin to drift.
It makes me wonder if the coming and going of people in your life is a set process, something determined by fate? Is there such thing as something "meant to be?"
This made me think about, not only boyfriend-girlfriend relationships and the consequences of friend-zoning, but also about the general people relationships: between friends, peers, co-workers. So many people pass through our lives, some staying for only a few hours, some over several years, and then those rare people who, with a little luck, have been there for almost your whole lifetime. In the moment, you always imagine someone to be there forever - you say that you will be "best friends forever" with your closest friend, or you say you will always love your significant other. But before you know it, the person you claimed to be your BFF has a new group of friends, and you get closer to another group, and you drift more and more until, like boy-girl relationships, you become strangers again. I think about my friends back at home, and find it hard to believe that only two years ago, I had talked to these people every day and we had laughed together, teased each other about boys, acted like music nerds together, and suffered through classes together. Now, we don't talk at all, and if we do it's if we by chance see each other when I go home on the weekend. We talk about needing to hang out and catch up soon, but it never happens. Things are just never the same anymore.
Even without distance as a factor, at IMSA I have drifted from quite a few people. Sometimes, all it takes is having once class in common to grow closer to someone, but when you don't have any classes, or even if you don't live in the same hall, you almost never see each other and begin to drift.
It makes me wonder if the coming and going of people in your life is a set process, something determined by fate? Is there such thing as something "meant to be?"
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